to 


^ 


MOTIVES  IN 
ENGLISH   FICTION 


BY 

Robert  Naylor  Whiteford,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Toledo  University:  Editor  of  "Anthology 

Of  English  Poetry  "  and  "  Goldsmith's  The  Deserted  Village  And 

Other  Poems:  Together  With  She  Stoops  To  Conquer 

And    The    Good-Natured    Man" 


# 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND    LONDON 
Zbe  "fcnicfeerbocfecr  press 
1918 


Copyright,  1918 

BY 

ROBERT  NAYLOR  WHITEFORD 


-HS 


TCbe  ftnicherbocfcer  pre«8,  Dew  t:w -ft 


Go 
MARION  MY  WIFE 

WHOSE  CRITICISM  AND  COUNSEL  HAVE  HELPED 
CREATE  THIS  BOOK 

AND    TO 

MY  FATHER 


/ 


PREFACE 

IN  this  volume  the  English  novelists  from  Sir  Thomas 
Malory  to  Miss  Mitford  have  been  chronologically 
arranged  according  to  the  dates  of  the  publication  of 
their  first  novels ;  and  the  material  presented  is  not  only  a 
history  of  English  fiction,  but  a  view  of  its  variations  in 
atmosphere,  motivation,  dialogue,  and  characterization. 
During  the  last  ten  years  while  reading  and  re-reading  the 
English  novels,  from  Malory  to  De  Morgan,  to  determine 
the  leading  motives,  distinctively  English  in  origin,  which 
were  formative  in  creating  the  atmosphere,  plot,  dialogue, 
and  characterization,  of  the  flowering  period  (i  833-1 870) 
of  English  fiction,  and  which  still  actuate  and  permeate  the 
pattern  of  its  composition,  I  have  been  greatly  impressed 
by  the  wonderful  variations  of  that  originality  that  reveals 
itself  as  the  unity  of  life,  of  which  De  Quincey  says:  "The 
fleeting  accidents  of  a  man's  life,  and  its  external  shows, 
may  indeed  be  irrelate  and  incongruous;  but  the  organ- 
izing principles  which  fuse  into  harmony,  and  gather  about 
fixed  predetermined  centres,  whatever  heterogeneous  ele- 
ments life  may  have  accumulated  from  without,  will 
not  permit  the  grandeur  of  human  unity  greatly  to  be 
violated." 

This  book  shows  the  motives  that  color  the  threads  in 
the  warp  and  woof  of  all  our  fiction.  When  we  pick  up  the 
garment  of  atmosphere,  motivation,  dialogue,  and  char- 

v 


vif  Preface 

acterization,  we  find  it  is  a  Joseph-coated  raiment  that  for 
centuries  has  been  woven  and  worn  by  the  novelists  from 
Malory  to  De  Morgan.     The  whole  force  of  my  exposition 
of  the  advance  of  the  English  novel  has  been  thrown  on 
motives  manifesting  themselves  in  variations  that  lie  back 
of  all  life.     Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  introductory  chapter  in 
Waverley  revealed  the  passions  of  life  as  always  the  same 
whether  "sixty  years  since"  in  1745  or  in  1805:  "those 
passions  common  to  men  in  all  stages  of  society,  and  which 
have  alike  agitated  the  human  heart,  whether  it  throbbed 
under  the  steel  corslet  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  bro- 
caded coat  of  the  eighteenth,  or  the  blue  frock  and  white 
dimity  waistcoat  of  the  present  day.     Upon  these  passions 
it  is  no  doubt  true  that  the  state  of  manners  and  laws  casts 
a  necessary  coloring;   but    the  bearings,  to  use  the  lan- 
guage of  heraldry, -remain  the  same,  though  the  tincture 
may  be  not  only  different,  but  opposed  in  strong  contra- 
distinction.    The  wrath  of  our  ancestors,  for  example,  was 
colored  gules;  it  broke  forth  in  acts  of  open  and  sanguin- 
ary violence  against  the  objects  of  its  fury.     Our  malig- 
nant feelings,  which  must  seek  gratification  through  more 
indirect  channels,  and  undermine  the  obstacles  which  they 
cannot  openly  bear  down,  may  be  rather  said  to  be  tinc- 
tured sable.     But  the  deep-ruling  impulse  is  the  same  in 
both  cases ;  and  the  proud  peer,  who  can  now  only  ruin  his 
neighbor  according   to   law,  by  protracted   suits,  is  the 
genuine  descendant  of  the  baron  who  wrapped  the  castle 
of  his  competitor  in  flames,  and  knocked  him  on  the  head 
as  he  endeavored  to  escape  from  the  conflagration.     It  is 
from  the  great  book  of  Nature,  the  same  through  a  thou- 
sand editions,  whether  of  black-letter,  or  wire-wove  and 
hot-pressed,  that  I  have  venturously  essayed  to  read  a 
chapter  to  the  public.  " 

In  conclusion,  I  am  deeply  grateful  to  my  friend,  Pro- 
fessor Richard  G.  Moulton,  Head  of  the  Department  of 


Preface  vii 

General  Literature  in  the  University  of  Chicago,  for  his  ex- 
amination of  my  manuscript.  He  has  kindly  given  me 
many  helpful  suggestions  and  such  criticism  as  have  made 
my  book  take  its  present  form  and  title.  I  am  also  greatly 
indebted  to  Professor  Felix  E.  Schelling,  Head  of  the 
Department  of  English  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
for  that  inspiration  which  caused  me  first  to  think  of  plac- 
ing such  a  work  before  the  world;  and  I  should  not  forget 
the  further  enthusiastic  encouragement  that  was  given 
me  by  Francis  F.  Browne,  formerly  editor  of  The  Dial.  I 
also  wish  to  thank  Philip  B.  McDonald,  Professor  of 
English  in  the  University  of  Colorado,  for  some  sugges- 
tions made  on  the  political  novel  when  he  was  in  my 
Seminar  in  English  Fiction  in  Toledo  University. 


Robert  Naylor  Whiteford. 


Toledo  University, 
Toledo,  Ohio, 

November  10,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — From   Sir   Thomas   Malory  to  Sir  Francis 

Bacon         .......         i 

II. — From  John  Bunyan  to  Jonathan  Swift  .       52 

III. — Samuel  Richardson,  Henry  Fielding,  Sarah 

Fielding,  and  Tobias  Smollett  .         .       86 

IV. — Robert  Paltock,  Charlotte  Lennox,  Thomas 

Amory,  and  Laurence  Sterne    .         .         .     119 

V. — Samuel  Johnson,  Charles  Johnstone,  John 
Hawkesworth,  Frances  Brooke,  Horace 
Walpole,  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Henry 
Brooke,  Henry  Mackenzie,  Richard 
Graves,  and  Clara  Reeve  .         .         .     133 

VI. — Frances  Burney,  Robert  Bage,  Sophia  Lee, 
Thomas  Day,  William  Beckford,  John 
Moore,  Charlotte  Smith,  and  Ann  Rad- 
cliffe        .         .         .         .         •         •  x55 

VII.— Elizabeth    Inchbald,    William    Godwin, 

Matthew  Lewis,  and  Maria  Edgeworth    .     192 

VIII.— Amelia  Opie,  Jane  Porter,  Lady  Morgan, 
Anna  Maria  Porter,  Charles  Robert 
Maturin,  Elizabeth  Hamilton,  Hannah 
More,  Mary  Brunton,  and  Jane  Austen      .     218 

IX.— Sir  Walter  Scott,  Thomas  Love  Peacock, 
Lady  Caroline  Lamb,  Susan  Edmonstone 
ix 


Contents 


Ferrier,  Mary  Wollstonecraft  Shelley, 
Thomas  Hope,  and  Mary  Russell  Mit- 
ford  .......     246 

X. — A   Glance  at   English   Fiction   from   Miss 

Mitford  to  Charles  Dickens    .         .         .     297 

Index  ........     367 


MOTIVES  IN  ENGLISH  FICTION 


Motives  in  English  Fiction 


CHAPTER  I 
From  Sir  Thomas  Malory  to  Sir  Francis  Bacon 

IN  the  year  that  Henry  of  Richmond  found  hanging  on 
a  hawthorn-bush  the  crown  of  the  last  of  the  Plan- 
tagenets  who  had  gone  down  fighting  like  a  demon  on 
Bosworth  Field  occurred  the  birth  of  great  English  prose 
fiction.  On  July  31,  1485,  Caxton  published  Sir  Thomas 
Malory's  Le  Morte  Darthur,  of  which  we  possess  no  manu- 
script. We  know  little  about  Sir  Thomas  Malory  except 
that  he  was  the  son  of  Sir  John  Malory  and  was  a  native 
of  Newbold  Re  veil,  Warwickshire,  and  was  in  his  youth 
companion-in-arms  to  Richard  Beauchamp,  the  Earl  of 
Warwick,  wTho  died  in  1439.  It  is  said  that  the  good 
knight  Sir  Thomas  completed  his  novel  in  1469;  and  some 
believe  that  he  died  on  March  14,  1471,  fourteen  years 
before  the  publication  of  his  success  in  intellectualizing 
the  French  romances  that  for  centuries  had  been  extolling 
King  Arthur  and  the  Knights  of  the  Table  Round. 

A  marvelous  unity  holds  together  the  protasis,  epitasis, 
katabasis,  and  catastrophe,  of  this  dramatic  epic-romance 
of  the  Morte  Darthur.  With  short  and  incisive  strokes  of 
genius  Malory  illuminates  his  preliminary  matter.  The 
initial  landscape  revealed  is  near  Tintagil's  towers.    Uther 


2  Motives  in  English  Fiction    ';. 

Pendragon  by  Merlin's  magic  passed  himself  off  as  Igraine's 
husband  Cornwall  to  beget  in  deceit  at  midnight'  the  child 
Arthur,  who.  after  the  marriage  of  Uther^and  Igraine, 
was  gnren  over  into  the  keeping  of  Sir  Ector;  and  then 
upon  the  canvas  are  splashed  the  colorings'  pi  English 
scenery  of  the  region  about  London.  After  years  had 
sped,  one  New  Year's  day  in  the  churchyard  against  the 
high  altar  from  the  anvil  of  steel,  placed  on  a  great  stone, 
Arthur  pulled  out  a  sword,  naked  by  the  point,  that  made 
him  righteous  king  of  all  England.  This  sword  which  he 
had  drawn  was  destined  for  use  at  once  against  Lot,  who 
brake  out  against  him  from  behind,  and  those  who  would 
not  easily  brook  his  kingship.  Thus  the  custom  of  striking 
at  him  from  behind  began;  and  the  smiting-down  process 
lasted  for  some  time  until  Arthur's  chivalry  overcame  the 
eleven  kings.  Shortly  after  Arthur's  first  sight  of  Guene- 
ver,  Merlin  announced  the  king's  doom,  which  would 
come  from  his  child  Mordred  whom  he  had  had  by  his 
own  sister,  Lot's  wife,  the  mother  of  Gawaine,  Gaheris, 
Agravaine,  and  Gareth.  Merlin  said  to  Arthur:  "your 
sister  shall  have  a  child  that  shall  destroy  you  and  all  the 
knights  of  your  realm."  Also  at  this  time  our  attention 
is  called  to  another  sister  of  Arthur's,  Morgan  le  Fay, 
Igraine's  daughter,  trained  in  necromancy  who  afterwards 
worked  him  woe  in  all  manner  of  treachery.  After  Rome 
asked  truage  and  before  the  babe  Mordred  escaped  the 
slaughter  of  all  May-day  children,  Arthur  was  strength- 
ened for  coming  troubles  by  the  gift  of  the  sword  from 
the  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

The  remainder  of  the  protasis  seems  to  be  only  a  series 
of  pronouncements  of  the  slow-coming,  certain  catas- 
trophe. We  hear  the  doom  of  Balin  pronounced  as  he 
draws  and  keeps  the  sword  that  afterwards  will  kill  him 
and  the  trumpeting  of  Arthur's  far-off  doom  at  Salisbury. 
There  is  also  a  forecast  of  the  subsequent  loss  of  the  Holy 


Malory's  "  Morte  Darthur"  3 

Graile  as  Balin,  with  the  spear  of  Longinus,  is  seen  piercing 
Pell  am,  in  whose  veins  flows  the  sacred  blood  of  Joseph  of 
Arimathea :  and  shortly  after  this  episode  is  pronounced 
the  doom  of  Gawaine,  that  he  should  be  slain  by  Balin's 
sword  in  the  hands  of  Launcelot;  then  Arthur's  doom, 
that  he  would  tie  himself  to  Guenever,  against  whom 
Merlin  had  warned  him ;  and  then  the  fate  of  Sir  Pellinore 
that,  when  he  would  be  in  greatest  distress,  his  best  friend 
should  fail  him.  This  foreboding  note  sounded  in  the 
protasis  is  to  be  heard  throughout  the  entire  narrative  of 
the  Morte  Darthur.  We  feel  that  the  majority  of  the 
Table  Round  are  destined  to  be  destroyed  by  those  they 
least  think  will  play  them  false.  Malory  arranges  that 
Merlin,  earthly  wisdom  applied  to  spiritual  matters,  is 
trapped  by  Nimue  into  the  rock,  which  proves  to  be  his 
sarcophagus.  When  Morgan  le  Fay  sent  her  Dejanira- 
like  gift,  the  mantle,  to  Arthur  he  could  very  well  have 
exclaimed,  "Near  and  dear  are  my  friends,  but  nearer 
and  deadlier  are  my  relatives."  When  Gawaine  plays 
Pelleas  false  with  Ettard,  there  is  a  shudder  as  we  feel 
the  coldness  of  the  steel  that  has  been  placed  at  the  throat 
of  false  knighthood,  for  the  great  Gawaine  has  descended 
to  the  level  of  Lady  Hermel's  vilest  knight.  Then  comes 
the  widening  of  Roman  influence  with  the  determination 
on  the  part  of  Arthur  to  pay  no  tribute  to  Rome.  Before 
Arthur  moves  into  Italy  to  be  crowned  at  Rome,  Malory 
announces  to  his  readers  that  Sir  Constantine,  son  to  Sir 
Cador  of  Cornwall  will  come  to  kingship  after  the  death 
of  Arthur,  that  Sir  Tristram  will  soon  be  making  love  to 
La  Beale  Isoud,  the  wife  of  King  Mark,  and  that  it  is 
noised  throughout  England  that  Launcelot  loves  Guenever. 
It  is  at  this  point  in  the  Sixth  Book  that  the  protasis 
passes  into  the  epitasis. 

The  epitasis  accentuates  the  dangers  lurking  within 
and  without  Arthur's  noble  order;  for  Gaheris  and  Gareth 


Motives  in  English  Fiction 


£> 


are  no  longer  loyal  to  Gawaine ;  and  Sir  Lamorak  is  killed 
from  behind  by  the  false  knights  Mordred  and  Gawaine. 
We  are  told  by  Malory  that  the  knights  following  Launce- 
lot  were  jealous  lest  Launcelot's  prowess  would  suffer  by 
the  rise  of  Tristram  who  had  been  made  a  knight  of  the 
Table  Round.  After  Sir  Launcelot,  assotted,  had  taken 
Elaine,  King  Pelles's  daughter,  for  Guenever,  and  thus 
had  made  possible  the  birth  of  Galahad,  there  came  to  the 
knights  the  vision  of  the  'dove  at  the  window,  in  her 
mouth  a  little  censer  of  gold,'  and  a  rapidly  following 
pronouncement  that  the  Table  Round  should  be  broken. 
After  Sir  Palamides,  the  foreign  knight,  was  christened, 
proving  that  those  outside  the  order  of  the  Table  Round 
were  still  susceptible  to  its  goodness,  Galahad  came  into 
the  feast  and  sat  in  the  Siege  Perilous.  The  Thirteenth 
Book  gives  one  the  sensation  of  a  pause  without  a  stop 
as  the  epitasis  is  gathering  strength  for  the  turning-point. 
The  adventures  of  the  Sangreal  begin  on  Whitsunday. 
Every  one  of  the  knights  knows  that  at  this  quest  of  the 
Sangreal  '  should  all  of  the  Table  Round  depart  and  never 
should  be  again  whole  together.'  After  the  appearance 
of  the  covered  Graile  at  the  high  feast  of  Pentecost,  it  is 
realized,  if  God  be  against  a  knight,  who  can  be  for  him? 
The  new  law  of  the  Holy  Church  is  faith,  good  hope,  belief, 
and  baptism.  The  glory  of  this  world  is  not  worth  a  pear, 
if  one  like  Launcelot  belongs  to  the  order  of  black  knights. 
Soon  Malory  causes  our  deadly  flesh  to  tremble  as  it 
beholds  things  spiritual  at  Sarras,  where  Percivale's  sister 
lay  buried  in  the  spiritual  place.  Sir  Galahad,  the  blend- 
ing of  the  virgin  lily  with  the  rose,  representing  the  virtu- 
ous fire  of  life,  finds  the  Holy  Graile,  that  had  forever 
departed  from  Logris  (England),  at  Sarras  where,  as  he 
dies,  the  Graile  and  spear  are  taken  up  into  heaven.  Sir 
Percivale  and  Sir  Bors  look  on  aghast  as  the  multitude  of 
angels  carry  Galahad's  soul  aloft.     Percivale  remained  a 


Malory's  "  Morte  Darthur"  5 

recluse  at  Sarras  for  a  year  until  death  destined  him  to  be 
buried  in  the  spiritualities.  Sir  Bors  came  back  to  Logris. 
Sir  Gawaine's  "untruest  life"  had  marred  his  quest;  and 
the  barren  fig-tree  repentant  Launcelot  had  passed  the 
lions  at  Carbonek  by  making  a  sign  of  the  cross  at  his 
forehead,  and  had  been  charred  on  trying  the  chamber 
wherein  had  glowed  the  Sangreal. 

The  epitasis  slips  into  the  katabasis  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Eighteenth  Book,  when  Guenever  is  suspected  of 
destroying,  even  poisoning,  good  knights.  The  queen  was 
suspected  of  having  had  her  hand  on  the  poisoned  apple, 
which  Sir  Pinel  gave  to  Gawaine,  but  which,  however,  Sir 
Patrise  ate,  and  she  would  have  been  burned  had  it  not 
been  for  Sir  Launcelot 's  coming  to  the  rescue.  The  last 
chance  is  at  this  time  given  Launcelot  to  forget  his  love  for 
Guenever  by  marrying  the  maiden  of  Astolat  at  Gilford 
who  by  nursing  him  at  the  hermitage  had  saved  his  life, 
but  this  he  does  not  choose  to  do;  and,  when  this  Elaine 
comes  in  the  barge  to  London  to  show  King  Arthur  that 
innocence  is  dead  in  his  city  and  that  she  might  have  saved 
his  noblest  knight,  "she  lay  as  though  she  had  smiled." 
Guenever,  after  Launcelot's  blood  was  found  on  her 
chamber-floor  by  Sir  Meliagraunce,  was  no  longer  sus- 
pected of  poisoning  knights  but  of  being  false  to  Arthur. 
At  this  point  in  the  narrative  Malory  for  a  moment  gives 
us  a  glimpse  of  Tristram  in  the  act  of  making  love  to 
Isoud  and  of  his  being  thrust  through  from  behind  with  a 
glaive  in  the  hands  of  King  Mark,  her  husband.  At  last 
Sir  Launcelot  is  espied  in  the  queen's  chamber;  and  the 
katabasis  has  merged  into  the  catastrophe  in  the  Twentieth 
Book,  when  Sir  Agravaine  and  Sir  Mordred  come  with 
twelve  knights  to  slay  him.  Launcelot  saves  himself  by 
means  of  ensconcing  himself  in  Sir  Colgrevance's  armor, 
which  protects  him  so  that  he  is  able  to  kill  thirteen 
knights  with  his  tremendous  buffets.    Mordred,  however, 


6  Motives  in  English  Hction 

escapes  to  tell  Arthur.  The  queen  is  sent  to  the  fire  at 
Carlisle  by  Arthur,  but  is  rescued  by  Launcelot  who  takes 
her  to  Joyous  Gard  to  which  Arthur  lays  siege.  The 
mighty  Gawaine  then  swears  to  kill  Launcelot,  who  had 
slain  Gareth  during  the  rescue  of  the  queen  at  Carlisle. 
The  Pope  would  stay  all  this  internecine  strife  by  having 
Launcelot  return  Guenever  to  Arthur.  After  the  gallant 
giving-up  of  the  queen,  Launcelot  goes  to  Joyous  Gard 
and  from  thence  over  the  seas  to  France.  Arthur  and 
Gawaine  pursue  him,  leaving  Mordred  regent  of  England 
with  power  over  Guenever. 

During  Arthur's  absence  occurred  Mordred 's  defection. 
Mordred  spread  the  news  that  Arthur  had  been  slain  in 
the  war  with  Launcelot  and  asked  Guenever  to  be  his 
wife.  She  cunningly  checkmated  him  by  going  to  London, 
provisioning  the  Tower,  ensconcing  herself  therein,  and 
by  sending  a  message  overseas  for  help.  Arthur  and 
Gawaine  returned  to  wage  war  against  Mordred.  In  the 
conflict  which  ensued  Gawaine  came  to  his  death  by  the 
re-opening  of  the  old  wound  which  had  been  given  him  by 
Launcelot.  Before  his  death  he  sent  a  letter  to  Launce- 
lot imploring  him  to  come  quickly  if  he  would  save  Arthur 
and  the  queen,  and  that,  as  for  himself,  Launcelot  could 
take  satisfaction  in  the  thought  that  one  Gawaine  was 
dying  of  the  old  wound  given  him  by  a  Launcelot.  Not 
long  after  the  death  of  Gawaine,  on  Trinity  Sunday  night 
there  appeared  to  Arthur  Gawaine's  ghost  to  stay  the 
doom  by  preventing  a  conflict  with  Mordred  the  next  day. 
But  fate  had  decreed  otherwise,  for  on  this  day,  when 
both  armies  had  determined  an  armistice,  a  little  adder 
crept  from  a  heath  bush  and  stung  a  knight  on  his  foot. 
This  knight  drew  his  sword  wherewith  to  kill  the  snake 
and  thousands  of  swords  flashed  from  their  scabbards, 
and  Arthur  and  Mordred  upon  a  down  by  the  seaside, 
westward  toward  Salisbury,  went  to  their  doom.    After- 


Malory's  "Morte  Darthur"  7 

wards  when  Launcelot  too  late  came  over  the  seas  he 
found  the  great  Gawaine  sleeping  in  his  tomb  in  the  castle 
of  Dover  and  the  mighty  Arthur  lying  sleeping  at  Glaston- 
bury. At  Almesbury  he  met  Guenever  who  told  him  that 
they,  both  of  them,  were  the  cause  of  all  the  disaster  that 
had  overtaken  Arthur  and  the  destruction  of  the  Table 
Round,  and  that  she  had  determined  to  remain  in  Almes- 
bury as  a  nun.  Launcelot  decided  that  a  similar  fate 
should  be  his  and  went  back  to  Glastonbury  to  become 
a  monk.  After  having  been  a  holy  man  for  a  little  over 
seven  years,  and  shortly  after  having  buried  Guenever 
beside  King  Arthur  at  Glastonbury,  he  died;  and  after 
he  was  prepared  for  burial  "he  lay  as  though  he  had 
smiled,"  and  he  was  interred,  as  he  had  requested,  at 
Joyous  Gard.  Sir  Constantine  became  king  and  a  few 
knights  left  of  the  Table  Round  retired  to  their  lands  as 
holy  men,  and  some,  such  as  Sir  Bors  and  Sir  Ector, 
according  to  what  had  been  advised  by  Launcelot,  went 
to  the  Holy  Land  to  fight  against  the  Turks.  Thus 
Malory  brings  to  a  close  a  plot  that  consists  of  a  well- 
compacted  series  of  events  marvelously  marshaled  in 
the  march  of  protasis,  epitasis,  katabasis,  and  catastrophe, 
by  the  formal  unity  of  continuous  pronouncements  that 
in  life  "ever  the  latter  ende  of  joye  is  wo.  " 

Sir  Thomas  Malory  felt  in  his  old  age  that  his  gray  hairs 
would  rest  more  quietly  on  his  pillow  at  night,  if  he  could 
put  in  fiction  something  that  might  stay  the  doom  of 
English  chivalry  and  the  disintegration  of  the  finest  part 
of  feudalism  by  holding  up  again  the  noblesse  that  once 
had  made  knighthood  leaven  the  English  land.  The  good 
knight  Sir  Thomas  would  have  the  Lancastrians  and  the 
Yorkists  respiritualize  themselves  by  dipping  their  knight- 
hood into  the  living  well  that  bubbled  forth  the  gentleness, 
the  courtesy,  the  truth,  and  the  steadfast  honor,  extant 
in  the  old  days  of  King  Arthur  when  all  the  land  according 


8  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

to  Chaucer  was  "fulfild  of  fayerye. "  The  civil  broil  be- 
tween the  Red  Rose  and  the  White — the  want  of  fealty 
to  England — "This  maketh  that  ther  been  no  fayeryes. " 
The  old  knight's  whole  epic-romance  embodies  what 
Shakespeare  injected  into  his  ethical  phrase,  coined  by 
considering  the  evils  existing  in  the  days  of  Henry  VI : 

Thrice  is  he  armed  that  hath  his  quarrel  just, 
And  he  but  naked,  though  lock'd  up  in  steel, 
Whose  conscience  with  injustice  is  corrupted. 

Malory  believed  that  men  in  armor  should  be  religious 
gentlemen  capable  of  no  "vileinye";  and  to  his  order  of 
the  white  knights  belong  the  good  knights  and  chivalrous 
gentlemen  of  Scott  and  Thackeray,  who  recognize  religion 
as  the  only  antidote  to  the  poison  of  sin.  He  avers  that  a 
good  man  is  never  in  danger  but  when  he  is  in  danger  of  a 
coward,  and  that  Apollyon  is  to  be  most  dreaded  when  he 
tempts  a  knight  in  woman's  likeness.  He  would  have 
again  moving  in  England  a  clean  knighthood  animated 
with  love  of  man  for  man  and  with  the  spirit  of  ready  for- 
giveness ;  not  being  hasty  in  judgment ;  feeling  itself  dis- 
honored if  envious;  at  no  time  speaking  fair  and  being 
false  thereunder;  and  above  all  things  loving  chastely. 
A  knighthood  moving  otherwise  he  believed  to  be  in 
danger  of  the  curse  of  book,  bell,  and  candle.  His  romance 
shows  that  "the  noblest  mind  the  best  contentment  has"; 
"for  soule  is  forme,  and  doth  the  bodie  make.  "  Freedom 
of  the  soul  comes  from  within  as  man  is  master  of  his 
own  passions.  Finest  law  and  finest  government  are  of  no 
avail,  for  self-control  may  be  lacking  under  the  freest 
government.  The  gloom  of  the  dim  religious  light,  in 
which  knights  spiritual  mistily  move  to  be  overcome  by 
knights  temporal,  fills  with  pessimism  the  soul  of  Malory, 
who,  when  he  sees  that  on  earth  there  is  no  stability 
anywhere,  cries  out,  'If  existence  is  the  road  to  death, 


Malory's  "  Mortc  Darthur"  9 

who  can  trust  this  life?'  But  he  believes  also  along  with 
his  Sir  Pellinore  that  "God  may  well  fordo  destiny." 
And  when  one  has  read  this  novel,  every  word  of  which  is 
illuminated  with  the  light  of  action  and  darkened  with 
the  shadow  of  nave,  crypt,  and  cloister,  one  reverently 
presses  to  his  heart,  as  if  in  a  land  of  paynims,  this  priceless 
missal  in  which  have  been  written  down  all  the  sins  that, 
if  practised,  would  lead  to  a  hell  on  earth,  and  all  the 
virtues  which,  if  practised,  would  make  mortals,  save 
wings,  all  fit  for  heaven. 

Malory  must  have  greatly  grieved  and  sorely  yearned 
after  his  kith  and  kin,  the  knights,  who  ruled  not  England 
with  the  virtues  of  their  ancestors.  By  fancy's  flight  we 
can  imagine  that  Malory,  as  he  neared  the  close  of  his 
romance,  wandered  sadly  through  his  manorial-hall  to 
seat  himself  at  his  study-window  to  weep  as  he  felt  forced 
to  give  Sir  Launcelot  his  inevitable  fate;  and  we  can  also 
fancy  that  Malory,  to  check  this  weeping  over  the  down- 
fall of  the  greatest  of  the  knights  of  the  Table  Round,  fell 
upon  a  great  laughter,  such  as  straightway  he  forced  the 
bishop  at  Glastonbury  in  his  dream  to  give,  which  caused 
all  the  fellowship  of  the  holy  men  to  rush  to  the  bedside 
of  the  bishop  to  hear  the  good  news  that  "houseled  and 
eneled"  Sir  Launcelot  had  so  prevailed  that  the  gates  of 
heaven  had  opened  against  him.  In  Phantastes:  a  Faerie 
Romance  for  Men  and  Women  (1858)  George  Macdonald 
caught  the  contagious  mirth  of  this  great  laughter  of 
Malory's  dreaming  bishop  at  Glastonbury,  when  he  has 
his  valorous  knight  say  to  all  modern  knights  (who  are 
no  whit  different  from  those  in  the  Morte  Darthur) : 

Somehow  or  other  .  .  .  notwithstanding  the  beauty  of  this 
country  of  Faerie,  in  which  we  are,  there  is  much  that  is 
wrong  in  it.  If  there  are  great  splendors,  there  are  corre- 
sponding horrors ;  heights  and  depths;  beautiful  women  and 


io  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

awful  fiends;  noble  men  and  weaklings.  All  a  man  has  to  do, 
is  to  better  what  he  can.  And  if  he  will  settle  it  with  himself 
that  even  renown  and  success  are  in  themselves  of  no  great 
value,  and  be  content  to  be  defeated,  if  so  be  that  the  fault 
is  not  his,  and  so  go  to  his  work  with  a  cool  brain  and  a 
strong  will,  he  will  get  it  done;  and  fare  none  the  worse  in 
the  end  that  he  was  not  burdened  with  provisions  and 
precaution. 

Malory  maintains  a  marvelous  unity  throughout  the 
romance  not  only  in  plot,  but  in  characterization  which  is 
sustained  by  a  rapid  moulding  of  materials  and  interest 
as  the  spotlight  is  shifted  from  Arthur,  Balin,  Gawaine, 
and  Gareth,  to  a  Tristram — and  from  a  Tristram  to 
Launcelot,  Galahad,  Percivale,  and  Bors,  and  from  these 
again  to  a  Launcelot  about  whom  its  mirage-like  gleam 
stays  longest  and  strongest  in  humanizing  power.  It 
may  be  added  that  the  masterly  way  in  which  Malory- 
manages  individual  spotlighting  is  enhanced  by  his 
art  of  casting  into  the  circle  already  illuminated  the 
shadow  of  the  next  character  whose  greatness  is 
to  be. 

From  an  inventive  point  of  view  Malory  is  most  original 
in  the  description  of  the  coming  of  the  corpse  of  the  maiden 
of  Astolat  in  the  barge  to  the  court  of  King  Arthur. 
Pollard  avers  that  for  this  scene  no  source  has  been  found 
in  any  French  romance.  It  is  in  this  twentieth  chapter 
of  the  Eighteenth  Book  that  Malory's  poetic  prose  moves 
with  more  vigor  and  pathos  than  Tennyson's  poetic 
adaptation  used  to  make  artistic  the  ending  of  the  epi- 
tasis,  in  The  Idylls  of  the  King,  at  the  close  of  Lancelot 
and  Elaine,  where  the  guilty  knight  perceives  that  for 
Guinevere  he  has  tossed  away  the  chance  of  a  lifetime  as 
he  gazes  upon  the  body  of  dead  innocence  in  the  barge  at 
Camelot.  A  comparison  of  the  two  passages  forces  an 
acceptance  of  the  fact  that  Tennyson's  poetry  has  not 


Malory's  "Morte  Darthur 


ii 


quite  come  up  to  the  level  of  the  simple  pathos  of  Malory's 
poetic  prose. 

And  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  world  will  remember 
among  the  women  of  Malory  not  so  much  Guenever  as  the 
maiden  of  Astolat,  who  saved  Launcelot's  life  at  the  her- 
mitage and  who  could  not  survive  loving  him  in  vain. 
Another  girl  in  great  English  fiction  was  not  to  die  in 
agony  of  unrequited  affection  until  in  1584  Robert 
Greene's  Myrania,  who  had  saved  Arbasto's  life,  turned 
on  her  left  side  in  bed  to  die  of  a  broken  heart  because 
Arbasto  preferred  the  love  of  Doralicia,  her  elder  sister. 
The  halo  of  religious  pathos,  gathered  about  the  maiden 
of  Astolat  from  the  time  that  she  shrieked  shrilly,  fell  in  a 
swoon,  and  was  carried  into  her  chamber,  to  the  time  that 
she  gave  heart-rending  directions  as  to  what  should  be 
done  with  her  body  after  death,  moved  on  after  a  hundred 
years  to  illumine  the  beautiful  features  of  Sidney's  in- 
tensely religious  Parthenia  about  to  go  to  her  Argalus 
in  heaven.  And  then  this  halo  of  the  pathetic  glided 
in  1748  to  where  it  could  hover  over  the  death-bed  of 
Richardson's  Clarissa  Harlowe  to  suffuse  with  bright 
religious  rays  the  clouds  through  which  the  maid  of  nine- 
teen, on  whose  coffin  by  her  own  order  had  been  placed 
the  symbol  of  a  white  lily  "snapt  short  off,"  prayed  to 
God  for  the  forgiveness  of  Lovelace  and  the  salvation  of 
her  own  soul  through  her  Saviour,  the  Lord  Jesus:  "and 
— now — and  now  (holding  up  her  almost  lifeless  hands 
for  the  last  time)  come— O  come— blessed  Lord— Jesus!" 
And  as  Belford  wrote  to  Robert  Lovelace:  "And  with  these 
words,  the  last  but  half-pronounced,  expired :— such  a 
smile,  such  a  charming  serenity  overspread  her  sweet  face 
at  the  instant,  as  seemed  to  manifest  her  eternal  happiness 
already  begun." 

Downwards   farther   in    our   fiction    in    Bulwer's    The 
Caxtons    (1849)    loom   and  gloom  in  pathos  the  follow- 


12  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

ing    passages    animated    with    the    spirit    of    Malory's 
ideals : 

Then,  in  details,  there,  in  stout  oak  shelves,  were  the  books 
on  which  my  father  loved  to  jest  his  more  imaginative  brother, 
— there  they  were,  Froissart,  Barante,  Joinville,  the  Mort 
d 'Arthur,  Amadis  of  Gaul,  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen,  a  noble 
copy  of  Strutt's  Horda,  Mallet's  Northern  Antiquities,  Percy's 
Reliques,  Pope's  Homer,  books  on  gunnery,  archery,  hawking, 
fortification — old  chivalry  and  modern  war  together  cheek- 
by-jowl. 

Old  chivalry  and  modern  war! — look  to  that  tilting  helmet 
with  the  tall  Caxton  crest,  and  look  to  that  trophy  near  it, 
a  French  cuirass — and  that  old  banner  (a  knight's  pennon) 
surmounting  those  crossed  bayonets.  And  over  the  chimney- 
piece  there — bright,  clean,  and,  I  warrant  you,  dusted  daily — 
are  Roland's  own  sword,  his  holsters  and  pistols,  yea,  the 
saddle,  pierced  and  lacerated,  from  which  he  had  reeled  when 
that  leg — I  gasped — I  felt  it  all  at  a  glance,  and  I  stole  softly 
to  the  spot,  and,  had  Roland  not  been  there,  I  could  have 
kissed  that  sword  as  reverently  as  if  it  had  been  a  Bayard's 
or  a  Sidney's. 


On  the  wall  above  the  cradle  were  arranged  sundry  little 
articles,  that  had,  perhaps,  once  made  the  joy  of  a  child's 
heart — broken  toys  with  the  paint  rubbed  off,  a  tin  sword  and 
trumpet,  and  a  few  tattered  books,  mostly  in  Spanish — by 
their  shape  and  look,  doubtless  children's  books.  Near  these 
stood,  on  the  floor,  a  picture  with  its  face  to  the  wall.  Juba 
had  chased  the  mouse  that  his  fancy  still  insisted  on  creating, 
behind  this  picture,  and,  as  he  abruptly  drew  back,  the  picture 
fell  into  the  hands  I  stretched  forth  to  receive  it.  I  turned  the 
face  to  the  light,  and  was  surprised  to  see  merely  an  old  family 
portrait;  it  was  that  of  a  gentleman  in  the  flowered  vest  and 
stiff  ruff  which  referred  the  date  of  his  existence  to  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth — a  man  with  a  bold  and  noble  countenance.    On 


Malory's  "Mortc  Darthur"  13 

the  corner  was  placed  a  faded  coat-of-arms,  beneath  which  was 
inscribed,  "HERBERT  De  Caxton,  Eq:  Aur:  JEtat:  35." 

On  the  back  of  the  canvas  I  observed,  as  I  now  replaced 
the  picture  against  the  wall,  a  label  in  Roland's  handwriting, 
though  in  a  younger  and  more  running  hand  than  he  now 
wrote.  The  words  were  these :  "  The  best  and  bravest  of  our 
line.  He  charged  by  Sidney's  side  on  the  field  of  Zutphen;  he 
fought  in  Drake's  ship  against  the  armament  of  Spain.  If 
ever  I  have  a  — "  The  rest  of  the  label  seemed  to  have  been 
torn  off. 

King  Arthur's  Excalibur,  Sir  Galahad's  white  shield, 
on  which  was  the  cross  of  the  blood  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea, 
and  the  swords  of  all  the  white  knights  of  the  Table 
Round,  are  the  weapons  not  only  of  the  good  knights  in 
the  Waverley  Novels  and  the  chivalrous  gentlemen  in 
Thackeray  but  of  those  heroes  who  in  all  our  fiction  fight 
the  Battle  of  Life;  and  it  was  one  of  these  untarnished 
Arthurian  swords  that  Malory  extended  to  Bulwer  to  give 
to  Captain  Roland  Caxton  who,  after  much  suffering, 
lived  to  see  his  only  son,  a  craven  knight,  redeem  a  dis- 
graceful life  by  grasping  the  guerdon  of  an  honorable 
death  on  a  field  of  battle  fought  with  sword  for  England's 
empire.  And,  as  at  the  close  of  the  Morte  Darthur,  the 
shield  to  this  sword  proves  to  be  the  Bible,  so  at  the  close 
of  The  Caxtons  the  sword  of  Captain  Roland  Caxton  is 
sheathed  in  the  scabbard  of  his  tear-blistered  Bible. 
Bulwer  like  Malory  implants  the  idea  in  the  minds  of 
modern  knights  whether  young  or  old  that  no  fate  is  quite 
as  happy  as  a  glorious  death  such  as  overtook  the  perhaps 
mythical  Sir  William  de  Caxton  on  Bosworth  Field;  and 
that  all  modern  houses  should  remember  their  ancestral 
heroes,  even  if  it  be  quite  impossible  to  trace  an  exact 
lineage  back  to  a  Sir  Herbert  de  Caxton — the  bravest  of 
the  line — who  charged  with  Sir  Philip  Sidney  at  Zutphen. 
Between  Malory's  Le  Morte  Darthur  (1485)  and  Lyly's 


14  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit  (1579)  no  great  piece  of 
fiction  appeared  except  More's  Utopia  which  was  written 
in  Latin  and  published  in  Louvain  in  1 516.  In  155 1  Ralph 
Robynson  translated  the  novel  into  English,  and  in  1556 
the  second  edition  of  this  translation  was  published.  In 
the  days  of  Henry  VIII  Sir  Thomas  More,  an  Oxford 
University  man,  and  a  sage  at  Chelsea  centuries  before 
Carlyle's  residence  there,  hiding  himself  behind  the 
interesting  form  of  a  tale  told  by  a  long-bearded  adven- 
turer who  had  been  on  three  voyages  with  Amerigo  Ves- 
pucci, whimsically  and  humorously  attacked  the  social 
and  political  evils  of  his  times.  The  setting  of  Utopia  is 
reality,  for  More  makes  use  of  the  time  when,  in  15 15,  he 
visited  Flanders  as  one  of  the  commission  to  confer  with 
the  ambassadors  of  Charles  V  about  the  renewal  of  his 
alliance  with  Henry  VIII.  Reality  becomes  romance 
when  one  day  on  his  way  home  from  mass  in  Antwerp  he 
accidentally  meets  Raphael  Hythloday,  the  man  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner  type.  The  story  that  issued  from  the 
lips  of  this  tanned-faced  man  was  that  he  had  been  for 
five  years  on  the  crescent-shaped  island  of  Utopia,  which 
had  fifty-four  cities  and  its  capital  at  Amaurote.  Utopia 
was  a  place  where  every  man  was  a  philosopher  and  there- 
fore fit  to  be  a  king.  Few  were  its  laws,  because  the  law 
of  the  inner  life  prevailed.  'Equalitie  was  the  cause  that 
every  man  had  enoughe. '  Its  government  was  in  the 
hands  of  a  Prince  and  its  Tranibores  and  Siphograuntes, 
corresponding  to  our  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives; 
and  the  state  was  strongly  affiliated  with  priests  to  whom 
the  minds  of  children  were  entrusted  to  be  moulded  in 
manners  conducive  to  preserve  the  peace  of  right-opin- 
ioned  government.  The  Utopians  were  all  compelled  to 
learn  some  trade  at  which  they  worked  six  hours  a  day; 
and,  when  not  at  work,  were  obliged  to  read  and  attend 
public  lectures.    Their  games  were  pieces  of  virtue  moving 


More's  "Utopia"  15 

on  chess-boards  to  checkmate  opposing  pieces  of  vice. 
There  were  no  ill-smelling  streets.  The  public  hospitals 
were  many.  The  whole  endeavor  of  the  inhabitants  was 
to  ease  the  misery  of  their  co-workers.  They  were  an 
aesthetic  folk  not  only  supping  to  music  but  giving  an 
easy  death  to  those  who  had  become  useless  members  of 
their  social  unit.  Such  an  action,  as  when  Justine  Trent 
in  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton's  The  Fruit  of the  Tree  (1907)  gives 
an  extra  dose  of  morphine  to  her  life-long  friend  Bessie 
Westmore  (Mrs.  John  Amherst)  when  her  spinal  malady 
is  considered  hopelessly  incurable,  would  have  been  re- 
garded by  the  Utopians  as  a  high  course  of  ethical  conduct ; 
and,  if  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton  had  been  living  in  Utopia, 
she  never  could  have  acridly  written  The  Custom  of  the 
Country  (1913)  because  divorces  were  only  granted  on  the 
grounds  of  infidelity  and  desertion.  There  were  no  law- 
yers, for  every  man  pled  his  own  case.  The  Utopians 
seldom  if  ever  went  to  war,  believing  that  it  was  "better 
either  with  money  or  by  pollicie  to  avoyde  warre  than  with 
muche  losse  of  man's  bloud  to  fight."  And  all,  whether 
Christian  or  heathen,  worshiped  the  Divine  Essence ;  for, 
from  the  time  of  their  first  king  Utopus,  they  had  con- 
formed to  his  decrees  that  all  religions  inspired  men  to  the 
worship  of  the  true  God.  And  their  Chief  Priest  was  given 
as  much  honor  om  public  occasions  as  the  Prince,  the 
Tranibores,  and  the  Ambassadours. 

The  story  within  the  story,  told  by  the  long-bearded 
stranger,  delightfully  and  humorously  conveying  to  the 
reader  the  estimate  which  was  set  on  money  and  jewels 
by  the  Utopians,  who  looked  upon  precious  stones  as 
"toyes  for  yonge  children  to  playe  withall, "  makes  its 
conclusion  worth  quoting: 

So  there  came  in  III.  Ambassadours  with  c.  (an  hundred) 
servauntes  all  apparelled  in  chaungeable  colours:  the  moste 


1 6  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

of  them  in  silkes :  the  Ambassadours  themselves  (for  at  home 
in  their  owne  countrey  they  were  noble  men)  in  cloth  of  gold, 
with  great  cheines  of  gold,  with  golde  hanginge  at  their  eares, 
with  gold  ringes  upon  their  ringers,  with  brouches  and  aglettes 
of  gold  upon  their  cappes,  which  glistered  ful  of  peerles  and 
precious  stones:  ...  to  the  e}^es  of  all  the  Utopians,  excepte 
very  fewe,  which  had  bene  in  other  countreys  for  some  reson- 
able  cause,  al  that  gorgeousness  of  apparrel  seemed  shamefull 
and  reprocheful.  In  so  muche  that  they  most  reverently 
saluted  the  vilest  and  most  abject  of  them  for  lordes :  passing 
over  the  Ambassadoures  themselves  without  any  honour: 
judging  them  by  their  wearing  of  golden  cheynes  to  be  bond- 
men. Yea  you  shoulde  have  sene  children  also,  that  had  caste 
away  their  peerles  and  pretious  stones,  when  they  sawe  the 
like  sticking  upon  the  Ambassadours  cappes:  digge  and  pushe 
theire  mothers  under  the  sides,  sainge  thus  to  them.  Loke 
mother  how  great  a  lubber  doth  yet  were  peerles  and  precious 
stoones,  as  though  he  were  a  litel  child  stil.  O  wittie  head. 
But  the  mother,  yea  and  that  also  in  good  earnest;  peace  sone, 
saithe  she:  I  thinke  he  be  some  of  the  Ambassadours  fooles. 

Ezekiel  in  the  last  eight  chapters  of  his  remarkable 
contribution  to  the  Bible  believes  in  a  grand  state  which 
can  only  be  effected  by  an  educated  priesthood  working 
toward  a  Holy  State  in  which  the  brotherhood  of  man 
would  receive  ethical  support  always  from  a  righteous 
hierarchy.  Plato  in  The  Republic  fell  back  on  the  morally 
educated  few  who  know.  He  advanced  from  Ezekiel's 
theocracy  to  an  aristocracy  of  highly  trained  minds. 
These  minds  believed  in  a  system  of  education  that  came 
from  within  and  not  from  the  external  world.  By  the 
power  of  his  own  inner  ethical  education  each  citizen 
would  obtain  from  the  state  that  justice  which  gave  him 
the  opportunity  to  practise  the  one  thing  for  which  his 
nature  was  adapted.  What  was  theoretically  thought  out 
by  Ezekiel  and  Plato  on  the  perfectibility  of  human 
government  More  and  Bacon   practically   applied  to  a 


More's  "Utopia"  17 

grand  state  already  existing  and  working  for  the  ame- 
lioration of  its  social  unit.  More  believes  in  the  educa- 
tion that  comes  from  within  and  Bacon  believes  that  the 
better  education  of  the  world  within  is  secured  by  its 
being  combined  with  a  more  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
world  without,  i.e.,  by  an  acquaintance  with  the  pheno- 
mena of  great  nature  itself.  H.  G.  Wells  in  A  Modern 
Utopia  and  Marriage  shows  us  that  there  is  a  collective 
mind  in  society  which  has  developed  "artistic  socialism" 
that  is  constructive  of  the  whole  social  unit  subordinating 
individuals  to  episodes  in  synthetic  welfare.  When  in 
A  Far  Country  a  Winston  Churchill's  erring  Krebs  and  in 
The  Harbor  an  Ernest  Poole's  erring  Kramer  clasp  hands 
with  an  erring  Carnegie  and  an  erring  Rockefeller  for  the 
redemption  of  the  suffering  poor  and  the  suffering  rich 
upon  whom  at  present  no  constructive  cultural  imagina- 
tion is  playing,  then  perhaps  all  the  Utopias  in  English 
fiction  will  be  realized.  Swift,  when  laughing  at  the 
Academy  of  Projectors  in  Gulliver's  Travels,  was  retro- 
actively laughing  at  Bacon's  noble  scheme  of  scientific 
investigation  which  on  the  island  of  the  New  Atlantis 
was  to  be  carried  on  by  Solamona's  College  of  the  Six 
Days  Works.  The  law  of  the  making  of  all  Utopias  has 
been  the  cult  of  following  scientific  achievements  that 
in  their  infancy  or  beginnings  were  cynically  sneered  at; 
for  the  scientific  point  of  view  is  the  only  point  of  view 
in  all  researches  carried  on  by  the  educated  few  who 
know.  Some  time  in  the  future  science  may  secure 
from  a  weak  mentality,  such  as  Swift  mocked  with  a  low 
laugh,  an  invention  which,  when  perfected  by  a  stronger 
mentality  projected  from  a  progressive  humanity,  may 
enable  one  to  extract  sunbeams  even  out  of  cucumbers. 
All  the  creators  of  Utopias  in  English  fiction  are  prophetic 
of  the  time  when  the  scientifically  educated  few  shall  have 
become  the  scientifically  educated  all. 


18  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

More's  Utopia  helped  to  frame  John  Barclay's  Argents 
(1621),  Bacon's  New  Atlantis  (1627),  Bishop  Francis 
Godwin's  The  Man  in  the  Moone  (1638),  Bishop  John 
Wilkins's  The  Discovery  of  a  World  in  the  Moone  (1638), 
James  Harrington's  Oceana  (1656),  certain  parts  of 
Nathaniel  Ingelo's  Bentivolio  and  Urania  (1660),  Henry 
Neville's  The  Isle  of  Pines  (1668),  Mrs.  Mary  Manley's 
The  New  Atalantis  (1709),  Defoe's  Robinson  Crusoe  (1719), 
Mrs.  Eliza  Haywood's  The  Memoirs  of  a  Certain  Island 
Adjacent  to  Utopia  (1725),  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels  (1726), 
Robert  Paltock's  Life  and  Adventures  of  Peter  Wilkins 
(1751),  Lytton's  The  Coming  Race  (1871),  Samuel  Butler's 
Erewhon;  or,  Over  the  Range  (1872),  Edward  Bellamy's 
Looking  Backward  (1888),  Morris's  News  from  Nowhere 
(1890),  and  H.  G.  Wells's  The  First  Men  in  the  Moon 
(1901)  and  A  Modern  Utopia  (1905). 

John  Lyly,  another  Oxford  man,  working  over  material 
taken  from  North's  Diall  of  Princes  (1557),  the  English 
translation  of  Antonio  de  Guevara's  El  Relox  de  Principes, 
established  a  good  pedagogical  novel,  Euphues,  the 
Anatomy  of  Wit  in  1579.  Lyly  was  not  only  indebted  for 
his  style  to  Guevara  and  to  George  Pettie's  A  Petite 
Pallace  of  Pettie  his  Pleasure  (1576)  but  also  to  Roger 
Ascham  for  the  same  phrasal  power  and  for  the  idea  of 
the  characterization  of  Euphues  who,  in  The  Scholemaster 
(1570),  represents  a  man  physically,  mentally,  and  morally 
perfect, — a  veritable  Sidney.  Out  of  Ascham's  The 
Scholemaster,  written  for  the  instruction  of  boys  in  the 
preparatory  schools,  grew  this  novel  created  with  the 
serious  purpose  of  showing  how  a  young  man  after  leav- 
ing the  English  schools  might  receive  further  polish  and 
education  by  traveling  on  the  continent,  and  of  warning 
him  against  the  fashionable  dissipations  existing  in  the 
great  cities.  Euphues,  an  Athenian  youth,  went  to  Naples 
which  was  at  that  time  perhaps  the  most  dissolute  city 


Lyly's  Euphues  19 

in  Europe.  It  was  there  that  he  met  the  beautiful  Lucilla, 
the  betrothed  of  his  friend  Philautus,  with  whom  he  fell 
violently  in  love  at  first  sight.  On  one  occasion  finding 
this  damsel  alone,  Euphues  eloquently  tendered  her  the 
utmost  passion  of  his  heart  in  this  fashion : 

Gentlewoman,  my  acquaintance  being  so  little,  I  am  afraid 
my  credit  will  be  less,  for  that  they  commonly  are  soonest 
believed,  that  are  best  beloved,  and  they  liked  best  whom  we 
have  known  longest,  nevertheless  the  noble  mind  suspecteth 
no  guile  without  cause,  neither  condemneth  any  wight  without 
proof:  having  therefore  notice  of  your  heroical  heart,  I  am  the 
better  persuaded  of  my  good  hap.  So  it  is  Lucilla,  that  coming 
to  Naples  but  to  fetch  fire,  as  the  byword  is,  not  to  make  my 
place  of  abode,  I  have  found  such  flames  that  I  can  neither 
quench  them  with  the  water  of  free  will,  neither  cool  them 
with  wisdom.  For  as  the  hop,  the  pole  being  never  so  high, 
groweth  to  the  end,  or  as  the  dry  beech  kindled  at  the  root, 
never  leaveth  until  it  come  to  the  top :  or  as  one  drop  of  poison 
disperseth  itself  into  every  vein,  so  affection  having  caught 
hold  of  my  heart,  and  the  sparkles  of  love  kindled  my  liver, 
will  suddenly,  though  secretly,  flame  up  into  my  head,  and 
spread  itself  into  every  sinew.  It  is  your  beauty  (pardon  my 
abrupt  boldness)  Lady,  that  hath  taken  every  part  of  me 
prisoner,  and  brought  me  unto  this  deep  distress,  but  seeing 
women  when  one  praiseth  them  for  their  deserts,  deem  that  he 
flattereth  them  to  obtain  his  desire,  I  am  here  present  to  yield 
myself  to  such  trial,  as  your  courtesy  in  this  behalf  shall  re- 
quire. Yet  will  you  commonly  object  this  to  such  as  serve 
you,  and  starve  to  win  your  good  will,  that  hot  love  is  soon 
cold:  that  the  Bauin  though  it  burn  bright,  is  but  a  blaze: 
that  scalding  water  if  it  stand  a  while  turneth  almost  to  ice :  that 
pepper  though  it  be  hot  in  the  mouth,  is  cold  in  the  maw: 
that  the  faith  of  men,  though  it  fry  in  their  words,  it  freezeth 
in  their  works:  which  things  (Lucilla)  albeit  they  be  sufficient 
to  reprove  the  lightness  of  some  one,  yet  can  they  not  convince 
every  one  of  lewdness:  neither  ought  the  constancy  of  all,  to 


20  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

be  brought  in  question  through  the  subtlety  of  a  few.  For 
although  the  worm  entereth  almost  into  every  wood,  yet  he 
eateth  not  the  cedar  tree.  Though  the  stone  Cylindrus  at  every 
thunder  clap,  roll  from  the  hill,  yet  the  pure  sleek  stone  mounteth 
at  the  noise:  though  the  rust  fret  the  hardest  Steele,  yet  doth 
it  not  eat  into  the  emerald:  though  polypus  change  his  hue, 
yet  the  salamander  keepeth  his  colour:  though  Proteus  trans- 
form himself  into  every  shape,  yet  Pygmalion  retaineth  his  old 
form:  though  ^Eneas  were  too  fickle  to  Dido,  yet  Troilus  was 
too  faithful  to  Cressid :  though  others  seem  counterfeit  in  their 
deeds,  yet  Lucilla,  persuade  yourself,  that  Euphues  will  be 
always  current  in  his  dealings.  But  as  the  true  gold  is  tried 
by  the  torch,  and  the  pure  flint  by  the  stroke  of  the  iron,  so  the 
loyal  heart  of  the  faithful  lover,  is  known  by  the  trial  of  his 
Lady :  of  the  which  trial  (Lucilla)  if  you  shall  accompt  Euphues 
worthy,  assure  yourself,  he  will  be  as  ready  to  offer  himself  a 
sacrifice  for  your  sweet  sake,  as  yourself  shall  be  willing  to 
employ  him  in  your  service.  Neither  doth  he  desire  to  be 
trusted  any  way,  until  he  shall  be  tried  every  way:  neither 
doth  he  crave  credit  at  the  first,  but  a  good  countenance,  till 
time  his  desire  shall  be  made  manifest  by  his  deserts.  Thus  not 
blinded  by  light  affection,  but  dazzled  with  your  rare  perfection, 
and  boldened  by  your  exceeding  courtesy:  I  have  unfolded 
mine  entire  love,  desiring  you  having  so  good  leisure,  to  give  so 
friendly  an  answer,  as  I  may  receive  comfort,  and  you  com- 
mendation. 

The  subdued  alliteration  and  the  delicate  arabesque 
antitheses  in  this  proposal  aid  in  oiling  the  machinery  of 
euphuism  so  that  it  loses  its  monotonous  click  and  re- 
sponds to  a  vibratory  warmth  of  an  emotion  that  is  genu- 
ine. The  form  and  tone  of  the  speech  make  it  perhaps  the 
finest  example  of  Lyly's  prose;  but,  unfortunately,  there 
is  a  slight  sweep  of  homiletics  in  the  movement  of  the 
soul-rhythm  that  helps  to  create  a  lurking  suspicion  on  the 
part  of  a  listener  that  Lucilla  will  ultimately  jilt  such  a 
forensic  knight  tilting  in  the  tournament  of  love.    By  such 


Scott's  Sir  Piercie  Shafton  21 

a  declaration  Euphues  failed  to  win  Lucilla's  undying 
love  just  as  the  Reverend  Mr.  Collins  by  a  long-winded 
proposal  failed  to  win  Elizabeth  Bennet  in  Jane  Austen's 
Pride  and  Prejudice  (1813);  and,  like  these  gallants,  so 
fared  Scott's  Sir  Piercie  Shafton  in  trying  to  win  the 
admiration  of  Mary  Avenel  by  saying : 

"Nay,  but  see  now,  .  .  .  how  you  are  startled!  even  as 
the  unbroken  steed,  which  swerves  aside  from  the  shaking  of 
a  handkerchief,  though  he  must  in  time  encounter  the  waving 
of  a  pennon.  This  courtly  exchange  of  epithets  of  honour  is  no 
more  than  the  compliments  which  pass  between  valour  and 
beauty,  wherever  they  meet  and  under  whatever  circumstances. 
Elizabeth  of  England  herself  calls  Philip  Sidney  her  Courage, 
and  he  in  return  calls  that  princess  his  Inspiration.  Wherefore, 
my  fair  Protection,  for  by  such  epithet  it  shall  be  mine  to 
denominate  you —  .  .  .  ." 

"Fear  not,  fairest  Protection,  .  .  .  that  I  can  be  provoked 
by  this  rustical  and  mistaught  juvenal  to  do  aught  misbecom- 
ing your  presence  or  mine  own  dignity;  for  as  soon  shall  the 
gunner's  linstock  give  fire  unto  the  icicle,  as  the  spark  of  pas- 
sion inflame  my  blood,  tempered  as  it  is  to  serenity  by  the 
respect  due  to  the  presence  of  my  gracious  Protection.  ..." 

"  Fairest  Protection,  .  .  .  doubt  not  that  thy  faithful  Affa- 
bility will  be  more  commoved  by  the  speech  of  this  rudesby 
than  the  bright  and  serene  moon  is  perturbed  by  the  baying 
of  the  cottage  cur,  proud  of  the  height  of  his  own  dunghill, 
which,  in  his  conceit,  lifteth  him  nearer  unto  the  majestic 
luminary." 


"Credit  me,  fairest  Protection,  .  .  .  your  Affability  is 
less  than  capable  of  seeing  or  hearing,  far  less  of  reciting  or 
reiterating,  aught  of  an  unseemly  nature  which  may  have 
chanced  while  I  enjoyed  the  Elysium  of  your  presence.  The 
winds  of  idle  passion  may  indeed  rudely  agitate  the  bosom  of 
the  rude;  but  the  heart  of  the  courtier  is  polished  to  resist 


22  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

them,  as  the  frozen  lake  receives  not  the  influence  of  the 
breeze  so — " 


Naturally  the  question  arises:  Was  Scott  in  this  por- 
trayal of  Sir  Piercie  Shafton  poking  fun  at  the  last  phases 
of  Elizabethan  euphuism,  when  it  was  decadent?  Scott 
insisted  that  in  his  mode  of  treating  Sir  Piercie  he  had 
made  no  mistake  but  rather  had  been  unfortunate  in 
choosing  what  was  stale  to  modern  readers.  We  care  no 
longer  for  a  Don  Armado,  a  Holofernes,  or  a  Malvolio,  or 
a  Bobadil.  Scott  was  loth  to  admit  that  Sir  Piercie  was 
a  failure  except  on  the  ground  of  his  being  an  example  of 
an  obsolete  affectation.  If  The  Monastery  had  been  pub- 
lished in  1 58 1,  Sir  Piercie  by  many  Elizabethans  would 
have  been  considered  a  worthy  successor  to  Euphues. 
There  is  much  that  binds  Sir  Piercie  Shafton  to  Euphues ; 
for,  as  Scott  says  in  defense  of  his  dethroned  Elizabethan 
knight,  ' '  the  language  of  the  lovers  to  their  ladies  was 
still  in  the  exalted  terms  which  Amadis  would  have 
addressed  to  Oriana,  before  encountering  a  dragon  for 
her  sake." 

Lyly's  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit  was  a  book  reflect- 
ing the  literary  influences  of  a  young  graduate  fresh  from 
Oxford  University.  It  is  a  series  of  dissertations  on  love 
and  education;  and  its  didacticism,  of  which  the  letters 
of  Eubulus  are  the  finest  examples,  makes  the  piece  of 
prose  a  purpose-novel  which  was  always  acceptable  to 
Elizabethans  because  of  their  love  for  introspection  and 
philosophizing.  They  liked  to  phrase  their  feelings  and 
indulge  in  psychological  expatiation,  thus  making  a 
side-play  of  characterization.  The  atmosphere  of  the 
novel  is  that  of  elucidation  of  ideas  arising  from  Lyly's 
study  of  the  manners  and  customs  of  his  epoch.  Lyly 
sacrificed  the  loyalty  and  honor  story  of  Euphues  and 
Philautus  because  his  one  desire  was  to  give  delicate 


Robert  Greene  23 

characterization  to  shadows  by  means  of  a  graceful  style 
which  would  captivate  the  noblemen  and  ladies  ifloving 
to  and  fro  in  the  court  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  He  seized 
exactly  upon  that  style  that  appealed  to  the  educated, 
emotional  public  of  his  day.  The  nearest  approach  to 
the  style  of  Lyly's  in  our  time  is  that  of  Henry  James 
which  in  its  subtleties  illumines  the  manners  and  customs  of 
one  class, — painters,  sculptors,  musicians,  and  dilettanti. 
Euphues  was  a  popular  novel  even  with  that  very  class  for 
whose  reprobation  it  was  intended.  Doubtless  the  ad- 
monitions in  it  were  heeded  by  those  who  observed 
Euphues  returning  from  Athens  a  man  so  morally  changed 
as  to  write  in  the  style  of  his  friend  Eubulus  ethical  letters 
to  Philautus.  In  the  second  part  Euphues  and  his  Eng- 
land (1580)  Euphues  and  Philautus  come  to  England  so 
that  the  author  can  apply  his  teachings  to  society  around 
him  and  incidentally  satirize  some  of  the  follies  of  the 
age.  If  Lyly  had  only  continued  to  write  novels  from 
1580  to  1590,  no  doubt  we  would  have  found  in  them  as 
in  his  dramas  a  steady  decrease  in  his  employment  of 
euphuism.  It  was  a  good  thing  that  Lyly  sensed  a  need 
for  style ;  for,  by  his  rich,  decorative  phrases  the  language 
of  English  fiction  became  capable  of  infinite  modulation  of 
which  Fielding  and  Thackeray  are  the  greatest  masters. 

This  euphuistic  style  helped  to  adorn  Munday's 
Zelauto  (1580),  Robert  Greene's  novels  (1 583-1 592), 
Thomas  Lodge's  novels  (1 584-1 596),  and  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  The  Arcadia  (1590),  besides  many  minor  pieces 
of  Elizabethan  fiction  too  numerous  to  mention. 

When  in  her  chamber  Mamillia,  debating  as  to  whether 
she  will  be  true  to  her  father  or  to  her  lover  Pharicles, 
soliloquizes,  "no  misling  mists  of  misery,  no  drenching 
showers  of  disasterous  fortune,  nor  terrible  tempests  of 
adversity  shall  abate  my  love  or  wrack  my  fancy  against 
the  slippery  rocks  of  inconstancy :  yea  if  my  lands  will  buy 


24  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

his  ransom  or  my  life  purchase  his  freedom,  he  shall  no 
longer  lead  his  life  in  calamity,  "  we  are  at  once  aware  that 
Robert  Greene,  a  graduate  of  Cambridge,  has  begun  to 
write  fiction  in  1583  in  the  style  of  John  Lyly.  The  most 
noteworthy  euphuistic  novels  of  Robert  Greene's  are 
Mamillia  (1583),  Gwydonius  (1584),  Arbasto  (1584), 
Pandosto,  the  Triumph  of  Time  (1588),  Perimcdes,  the 
Blacksmith  (1588),  Alcida  (1589).  Menaphon  (1589), 
Mourning  Garment  (1590),  Never  Too  Late  (1590),  Philo- 
mela (1592),  A  Disputation  Between  a  He  Conny-Catcher 
and  a  She  Conny-Catcher  (1592),  The  Black  Bookes  Messen- 
ger, Laying  Open  the  Life  and  Death  of  Ned  Browne,  One  of 
the  Most  Notable  Cutpurses,  Crosbiters,  and  Conny-Catcher s 
That  Ever  Lived  in  England  (1592),  and  Groatsworth  of  Wit 
Bought  with  a  Million  of  Repentance  (1596). 

In  Mamillia  there  is  the  slight  autobiographic  flavor 
of  Greene's  acquaintance  with  the  slum-banditti  of 
Europe.  In  Saragossa  Pharicles  fascinated  by  its  under- 
world fell  into  the  net  spread  by  the  wiles  of  a  courtesan, 
Clarynda,  dwelling  therein.  Mamillia,  to  whom  he  had 
pledged  his  love,  at  once  in  Padua  puts  on  the  apparel  of 
disguise  and  runs  like  Shakespeare's  Portia  to  the  Sara- 
gossan  courtroom  to  save  the  life  of  Pharicles  who  had 
been  accused  by  Clarynda  of  being  a  public  spy.  Mamil- 
lia before  the  magistrate  of  Saragossa  revealing  her 
identity  pleads  his  cause  so  well  that  she  is  rewarded  by 
having  a  faithless  wooer  thrown  into  her  arms  for  a 
husband.  Pharicles,  not  at  all  ashamed  of  his  previous 
conduct,  asks  that  all  his  forepassed  follies  be  forgiven 
and  forgotten;  and  Mamillia  quickly  assures  him  that 
she  has  no  ill  things  to  remember  at  his  hands. 

In  Arbasto:  the  Anatomie  of  Fortune  (1584)  we  listen  to 
Arbasto,  once  King  of  Denmark,  but  now  a  hermit  residing 
in  a  cave  near  Sidon,  who  insists  on  relating  how  his  life 
had  been  ruined  by  his  love  for  Doralicia,  daughter  of 


Greene's  "Arbasto"  25 

Pelorus,  King  of  France.  During  a  truce  in  the  war  waged 
with  France  he  had  met  Doralicia  in  the  camp,  where  at 
the  same  time  without  his  knowledge  he  was  looked  upon 
and  loved  by  Myrania,  the  youngest  daughter  of  Pelorus. 
At  length  Pelorus  seized  Arbasto  and  Egerio,  his  friend, 
and  cast  both  of  them  into  prison  from  which  they  escaped 
by  the  strategy  of  Myrania.  At  this  time  Arbasto  in- 
fluenced by  the  feeling  of  gratitude  pledged  himself  to 
Myrania  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  heart  belonged  to 
Doralicia.  Myrania,  finding  out  his  double  dealing  from 
the  correspondence  he  had  been  carrying  on  with  her 
elder  sister,  pines  away  and  is  on  her  death-bed  when 
Arbasto  comes  to  comfort  her  with  hypocritical  words 
which  intimate  that  he  will  shortly  make  her  his  queen. 
In  hellish  fury  Myrania  started  up  in  her  bed  gesticulating 
in  a  frenzy  and,  notwithstanding  that  she  was  kept  down 
by  her  ladies,  succeeded  in  articulating  and  hurling  at  the 
head  of  Arbasto  the  most  hateful  curses : 

"0  hapless  Myrania,  could  not  Medea's  mishap  have  made 
thee  beware?  Could  not  Ariadne's  ill  luck  have  taught  thee  to 
take  heed?  Could  not  Phillis  misfortune  have  feared  thee 
from  the  like  folly:  but  thou  must  like  and  love  a  straggling 
stranger?  Ay  me  that  repentance  should  ever  come  too  late: 
for  now  I  sigh  and  sorrow,  but  had  I  wist  comes  out  of  time; 
folly  is  sooner  remembered  than  redressed,  and  time  may  be 
r  jpented,  but  not  recalled. 

"But  I  sec  it  is  a  practice  in  men  to  have  as  little  care  of 
their  own  oaths,  as  of  their  Ladies  honors,  imitating  Jupiter, 
who  never  kept  oath  he  sware  to  Juno:  didst  thou  not  false 
Arbasto  protest  with  solemn  vows,  when  thy  life  did  hang  in 
the  balance,  that  thy  love  to  Myrania  should  be  always  loyal, 
and  hast  thou  not  since  sent  and  sued  secretly  to  win  the  good 
will  of  Doralice?  Didst  thou  not  swear  to  take  me  to  thy 
mate,  and  hast  thou  not  since  sought  to  contract  with  her  a 
new  match?     Thou  didst  promise  to  be  true  unto  me,  but 


26  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

hast  proved  trusty  unto  her?  What  should  I  say,  thou  hast 
presented  her  with  pleasant  drinks,  and  poisoned  me  with 
bitter  potions:  the  more  is  my  penury,  and  the  greater  is  thy 
perjury.  But  vile  wretch,  doest  thou  think  this  thy  villany 
shall  be  unrevenged?  No,  no  Egerio:  I  hope  the  gods  have 
appointed  thee  to  revenge  my  injuries:  thou  hast  sworn  it, 
and  I  fear  not  but  thou  wilt  perform  it.  And  that  thou  may  est 
know  I  exclaim  not  without  cause,  see  here  the  Letters  which 
have  passed  between  this  false  traitour  and  Doralice. " 


"Clear  thyself  traitorous  Arbasto  thou  canst  not,  persuade 
me  thou  shalt  not,  forgive  thee  I  will  not,  cease  therefore  to 
speak,  for  in  none  of  these  thou  shalt  speed.  Egerio  I  saved 
thy  life,  then  revenge  my  death,  and  so  content  I  die,  yet  only 
discontent  in  this,  that  I  cannot  live  to  hate  Arbasto  so  long 
as  I  have  loved  him.  " 

And  with  that,  turning  upon  her  left  side,  with  a  gasping 
sigh  she  gave  up  the  ghost.  .  .  . 

Arbasto  in  the  pangs  of  remorse  did  not  move  to  meet 
the  advances  of  reconciliation  on  the  part  of  Doralicia. 
At  length,  being  abandoned  by  his  own  people  for  having 
broken  his  promise,  he  left  Denmark  for  a  hermit's  cave 
wherein  he  could  sorrow  for  the  mishap  of  Myrania  and 
could  rejoice  over  the  misery  of  Doralicia.  As  Malory's 
maid  of  Astolat  had  looked  at  Launcelot  and  had  loved 
him  with  the  love  that  was  her  doom,  so  Robert  Greene's 
Myrania  had  looked  upon  and  loved  Arbasto.  They  were 
both  such  tender-hearted  maidens  that  they  could  not 
survive  the  shock  of  unrequited  love.  In  Greene's  early 
novels  we  have  tender-hearted  women  such  as  Mamillia, 
Myrania,  Bellaria,  Isabel,  and  hard-hearted  men  such  as 
Pharicles,  Arbasto,  Pandosto,  and  Francesco.  In  Pan- 
dosto  (1588)  Bellaria  for  her  faithfulness  to  Pandosto  is 
rewarded  by  seeing  her  husband  cast  their  lawful  babe 


Greene's  "Never  Too  Late"  27 

into  a  boat  to  have  the  whistling  winds  for  a  lullaby  and 
salt  foam  for  sweet  milk  and  by  having  him  cast  her  into 
a  prison  to  pass  to  a  speedy  death. 

In  Never  Too  Late  (1590)  in  the  city  of  Caerbranck, 
Brittaine,  we  see  Francesco  making  love  to  Isabel,  the 
daughter  of  Seigneur  Fregoso.  Isabel  seems  determined 
to  have  Francesco  even  though  her  father  frowned  upon 
the  match  because  her  suitor  was  not  rich  enough  in  lands. 
The  lovers  secretly  eloped  together  on  horseback  to  Dune- 
castrum  where  they  were  married.  Her  father  pursued 
and  caught  them,  accusing  Francesco  of  not  only  stealing 
his  daughter  but  some  plate.  Francesco  was  put  into 
prison  and  Isabel  kept  under  vigilance  in  the  house  of  the 
Mayor.  Francesco  was  at  length  freed  from  custody  by 
the  Mayor  who  had  once  been  young  himself  and  realized 
"youth  would  have  his  swing."  After  the  lovers  had 
lived  for  five  years  in  the  country  in  the  highest  kind  of 
connubial  bliss,  Fregoso  forgave  the  couple  and  recalled 
them  to  his  house  in  Caerbranck,  in  which  for  two  years 
they  continued  to  live  in  all  happiness  until  Francesco 
was  called  on  business  to  the  city  of  Troynouant  where  he 
met  the  wicked  woman,  the  siren  Infida.  Isabel,  knowing 
very  well  what  is  keeping  her  husband  in  Troynouant, 
takes  the  gentlest  measure  that  ever  a  woman  took  to 
reclaim  her  erring  spouse.  She  writes  the  following  letter 
filled  with  tenderest  solicitude  for  Francesco  rationally 
submitting  for  his  perusal  just  what  would  make  any 
reasonable  husband  break  off  from  his  inamorata. 

Isabel  to  Francesco 

health. 

If  Penelope  longed  for  her  Ulysses,  think  Isabel  wisheth  for 
her  Francesco,  as  loyal  to  thee  as  she  was  constant  to  the  wily 
Greek,  and  no  less  desirous  to  see  thee  in  Caerbranck,  than 


28  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

she  to  enjoy  his  presence  in  Ithaca,  watering  my  cheeks  with 
as  many  tears,  as  she  her  face  with  plaints,  yet  my  Francesco, 
hoping  I  have  no  such  cause  as  she  to  increase  her  cares :  for  I 
have  such  resolution  in  thy  constancy,  that  no  Circes  with  all 
her  enchantments,  no  Calipso  with  all  her  sorceries,  no  Syren 
with  all  their  melodies  could  pervert  thee  from  thinking  on 
thine  Isabel :  I  know  Francesco  so  deeply  hath  the  faithful 
promise  and  loyal  vows  made  and  interchanged  between  us 
taken  place  in  thy  thoughts,  that  no  time  how  long  soever,  no 
distance  of  place  howsoever  different,  may  alter  that  impres- 
sion. But  why  do  I  infer  this  needless  insinuation  to  him,  that 
no  vanity  can  alienate  from  vertue :  let  me  Francesco  persuade 
thee  with  other  circumstances.  First  my  Sweet,  think  how 
thine  Isabel  lies  alone,  measuring  the  time  with  sighs,  and 
thine  absence  with  passions;  counting  the  day  dismal,  and  the 
night  full  of  sorrows;  being  every  way  discontent,  because  she 
is  not  content  with  her  Francesco.  The  onely  comfort  that 
I  have  in  thine  absence  is  thy  child,  who  lies  on  his  mother's 
knee,  and  smiles  as  wantonly  as  his  father  when  he  was  a 
wooer.  But  when  the  boy  says : ' '  Mam,  where  is  my  dad,  when 
will  he  come  home  ? "  Then  the  calm  of  my  content  turneth  to 
a  present  storm  of  piercing  sorrow,  that  I  am  forced  sometime 
to  say:  "Unkind  Francesco,  that  forgets  his  Isabel."  I  hope 
Francesco  it  is  thine  affaires,  not  my  faults  that  procureth  this 
long  delay.  For  if  I  knew  my  follies  did  anyway  offend  thee,  to 
rest  thus  long  absent,  I  would  punish  myself  with  outward  and 
inward  penance.  But,  howsoever,  I  pray  for  thy  health,  and 
thy  speedy  return,  and  so  Francesco  farewell. 

Thine  more  than  her  owne 

Isabel. 

In  perusing  this  letter  the  reader  should  note  the 
reference  to  Isabel's  little  boy  who  is  quoted  as  saying, 
"Mam,  where  is  my  dad,  when  will  he  come  home?" 
For  by  it  there  is  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  sorrows  of  child- 
hood which  are  to  be  emphasized  from  this  time  on  in 
English  fiction.     Later,   in  Fielding,   another  small  boy 


Greene's  "Groatsworth  of  Wit"  29 

will  cry  out  to  an  Amelia  as  he  hears  a  knock  at  the  door, 
"There  is  papa,  mama;  pray  let  me  stay  and  see  him 
before  I  go  to  bed";  but  no  papa  enters,  for  he  (Booth) 
is  supping  with  the  perfidious  Miss  Matthews.  As 
Robert  Greene  continued  to  write  he  emphasized  more  and 
more  the  autobiographic  as  in  Never  Too  Late  (1590).  As 
Francesco  in  Troynouant  maltreated  Isabel  in  far  Caer- 
branck  by  being  false  to  her  with  the  siren  Infida,  so 
Greene  in  London  at  the  time  of  the  composition  of  this 
novel  no  doubt  was  thinking  of  his  abandoned  wife  and 
child  in  far  Norwich.  Indeed,  in  Fielding's  Amelia  (1751), 
this  Francesco  passes  into  a  Booth  playing  Amelia  false 
with  Miss  Matthews;  and  Isabel  is  a  forerunner  of  Amelia, 
who  clings  to  her  husband  (Booth)  in  spite  of  her  minute 
knowledge  of  the  fascinating  Miss  Matthews.  Isabel  has 
the  Mamillia-like  quality  of  forgiveness  in  her  nature  so 
that,  when  her  husband  comes  back  to  her  after  quarreling 
with  Infida,  she  royally  forgives  him  for  all  his  trans- 
gressions with  a  smile,  a  tear,  and  a  kiss. 

Groatsworth  of  Wit  Bought  with  a  Million  of  Repentance 
(1596),  published  after  Greene's  death  and  written  per- 
haps by  Chettle,  contains  the  simple  story  of  an  old  miser, 
Gorinius,  wTho  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of  wrhom  was  Lu- 
canio  and  the  younger  Roberto.  When  the  old  man  felt 
death  approaching  he  bequeathed  his  whole  estate  to 
Lucanio  because  he  had  executive  ability  and  to  Roberto 
he  gave  a  groat  so  that  by  it  the  younger  son  could  never 
contaminate  himself  with  the  accumulation  of  tainted 
wealth.  A  flauntingly  gay  young  damsel  Lamilia  of  the 
Elizabethan  underworld  appears.  With  the  fickleness  of 
her  type  she  first  aided  Roberto  in  plundering  Lucanio 
and  then  veered  to  the  side  of  the  elder  brother  to  push 
Roberto  hopelessly  to  the  bottom  of  the  quagmire.  At 
this  point  in  the  story  Roberto,  robbed  of  everything,  girl 
and  brother,  contemplates  suicide.    The  novel  is  strongly 


30  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

autobiographic.  In  Never  Too  Late  Francesco  is  referred 
to  as  a  university  scholar  who  teaches  school  amid  the 
beauties  of  a  rural  district  in  order  to  support  Isabel.  In 
Groatsworth  of  Wit  Roberto  is  such  a  fine  scholar  that  he  is 
advised  by  a  player  to  turn  his  knowledge  into  money  by 
writing  dramas.  One  can  read  between  the  lines  that  this 
Roberto  is  Robert  Greene;  and,  towards  the  end  of  the 
narrative,  there  is  the  pathetic  reference  to  the  gentle 
woman  his  wife  who  labored  to  recall  him  from  the  nips, 
foysters,  coney-catchers,  crossbiters,  lifts,  high  lawyers, 
and  all  the  rabble  of  that  unclean  generation  of  vipers. 
It  would  seem  that  Greene's  wife  was  compelled  to  give 
her  husband  over  to  all  lewdness.  The  perfect  image  of 
dropsy,  the  loathsome  scourge  of  lust,  without  one  groat 
was  so  sunk  in  the  depths  of  heartless  misery  that  he 
communicated  his  wife's  sorrowful  lines  among  his  loose 
trulls  that  jested  at  her  bootless  laments.  And  at  the  close 
of  the  novel  Robert  Greene  interrupts  his  own  narrative 
in  this  manner,  "Here  (Gentlemen)  break  I  off  Roberto's 
speech;  whose  life  in  most  parts  agreeing  with  mine 
found  one  self-punishment  as  I  have  done.  Hereafter 
suppose  me  the  said  Roberto  .  .  .  ,"  thus  pronouncing 
it  to  be  all  autobiography. 

Just  as  Christopher  Marlowe  humanized  cruel,  erring 
Tamburlaine  as  he  stalks  throughout  tragedy  an  almost 
insane  figure  instinctively  striking  out  at  the  uncontrol- 
lable circumstances  which  have  balked  and  blighted  him, 
so  Robert  Greene  humanized  the  terrible  Elizabethan 
underworld,  of  which  he  was  a  part,  and  into  which, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  murthering-piece  of  his  own 
remorse,  he  shot  ethical  pellets  in  the  form  of  pamphlet- 
fiction  for  the  redemption  of  its  inmates  and  himself.  It 
is  well  to  remember  that  Robert  Greene  enriched  fiction 
with  disguise  of  personality  and  embellished  it  with  the 
romance  of  elopement  for  lovers ;  foreshadowed  that  sable 


Greene's  "Pandosto"  31 

land  wherein  would  exist  the  sorrows  of  childhood;  and 
emphasized  autobiography. 

By  comparing  and  contrasting  Fawnia's  speech,  uttered 
when  passionate  and  alone,  just  after  she  has  consented  to 
be  wooed  by  Dorastus,  if  he  will  turn  shepherd,  with  that 
uttered  by  Rosalynde,  when  passionate  and  alone,  after 
her  brisk  dialogue  with  Rosader  in  Arden  Forest,  we  feel 
that  Greene's  chronological,  euphuistic  successor  was 
Lodge,  who  must  have  perused  the  pages  of  Pandosto 
(1588)  before  constructing  Rosalynde's  soliloquy  that  is 
strangely  similar  in  atmosphere,  motivation,  and  char- 
acterization, to  that  which  had  been  constructed  by 
Greene  for  Fawnia. 

And  with  that  the  presence  of  his  men  broke  off  their  parle, 
so  that  he  went  with  them  to  the  palace  and  left  Fawnia  sitting 
still  on  the  hill  side,  who,  seeing  that  the  night  drew  on,  shifted 
her  folds,  and  busied  herself  about  other  work  to  drive  away 
such  fond  fancies  as  began  to  trouble  her  brain.  But  all  this 
could  not  prevail;  for  the  beauty  of  Dorastus  had  made  such 
a  deep  impression  in  her  heart,  as  it  could  not  be  worn  out 
without  cracking,  so  that  she  was  forced  to  blame  her  own 
folly  in  this  wise: 

"Ah,  Fawnia,  why  dost  thou  gaze  against  the  sun,  or  catch 
at  the  wind?  stars  are  to  be  looked  at  with  the  eye,  not  reached 
at  with  the  hand :  thoughts  are  to  be  measured  by  fortunes,  not 
by  desires :  falls  come  not  by  sitting  low,  but  by  climbing  too 
high.  What  then,  shall  all  fear  to  fall  because  some  hap  to 
fall?  No,  luck  cometh  by  lot,  and  fortune  windeth  those 
threads  which  the  destinies  spin.  Thou  art  favoured,  Fawnia, 
of  a  prince,  and  yet  thou  art  so  fond  to  reject  desired  favours : 
thou  hast  denial  at  thy  tongue's  end,  and  desire  at  thy  heart's 
bottom;  a  woman's  fault  to  spurn  at  that  with  her  foot,  which 
she  greedily  catcheth  at  with  her  hand.  Thou  lovest  Dorastus, 
Fawnia,  and  yet  seemest  to  lour.  Take  heed:  if  he  retire 
thou  wilt  repent;  for  unless  he  love,  thou  canst  but  die.  Die 
then,   Fawnia,  for  Dorastus  doth  but  jest:  the  lion  never 


32  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

preyeth  on  the  mouse,  nor  falcons  stoop  not  to  dead  stales. 
Sit  down  then  in  sorrow,  cease  to  love  and  content  thyself 
that  Dorastus  will  vouchsafe  to  flatter  Fawnia,  though  not  to 
fancy  Fawnia.  Heigh  ho !  ah  fool,  it  were  seemlier  for  thee  to 
whistle,  as  a  shepherd,  than  to  sigh  as  a  lover."  And  with 
that  she  ceased  these  perplexed  passions,  folding  her  sheep  and 
hieing  home  to  her  poor  cottage. 


With  that  they  put  their  sheep  into  the  cotes,  and  went 

home  to  her  friend  Corydon's  cottage,  Aliena  as  merry  as 

might  be  that  she  was  thus  in  the  company  of  her  Rosalynde; 

but  she,  poor  soul,  that  had  love  her  lodestar,  and  her  thoughts 

set  on  fire  with  the  flame  of  fancy,  could  take  no  rest,  but  being 

alone  began  to  consider  what  passionate  penance  poor  Rosader 

was  enjoined  to  by  love  and  fortune,  that  at  last  she  fell  into 

this  humour  with  herself: 

"Ah  Rosalynde,  how  the  Fates  have  set  down 

in  their  synod  to  make  thee  unhappy:  for  when 
passionate  J  \^J 

alone.  Fortune  hath  done  her  worst,  then  Love  comes  in 

to  begin  a  new  tragedy :  she  seeks  to  lodge  her  son  in 
thine  eyes,  and  to  kindle  her  fires  in  thy  bosom.  Beware, 
fond  girl,  he  is  an  unruly  guest  to  harbour;  for  cutting  in  by 
entreats,  he  will  not  be  thrust  out  by  force,  and  her  fires  are 
fed  with  such  fuel,  as  no  water  is  able  to  quench.  Seest  thou 
not  how  Venus  seeks  to  wrap  thee  in  her  labyrinth,  wherein  is 
pleasure  at  the  entrance,  but  within,  sorrows,  cares,  and  dis- 
content? She  is  a  Siren,  stop  thine  ears  to  her  melody;  she  is 
a  basilisk,  shut  thy  eyes  and  gaze  not  at  her  lest  thou  perish. 
Thou  art  now  placed  in  the  country  content,  where  are 
heavenly  thoughts  and  mean  desires:  in  those  lawns  where 
thy  flocks  feed,  Diana  haunts:  be  as  her  nymphs  chaste,  and 
enemy  to  love,  for  there  is  no  greater  honour  to  a  maid,  than 
to  account  of  fancy  as  a  mortal  foe  to  their  sex.  Daphne,  that 
bonny  wench,  was  not  turned  into  a  bay  tree,  as  the  poets 
feign:  but  for  her  chastity  her  fame  was  immortal,  resembling 
the  laurel  that  is  ever  green.  Follow  thou  her  steps,  Rosalynde, 
and  the  rather,  for  that  thou  art  an  exile,  and  banished  from 


Lodge's  "Rosalynde"  33 

the  court;  whose  distress,  and  it  is  appeased  with  patience, 
so  it  would  be  renewed  with  amorous  passion.  Have  mind  on 
thy  forepassed  fortunes;  fear  the  worst,  and  entangle  not 
thyself  with  present  fancies,  lest  loving  in  haste,  thou  repent 
thee  at  leisure.  Ah,  but  yet,  Rosalynde,  it  is  Rosadcr  that 
courts  thee;  one  who  as  he  is  beautiful,  so  he  is  virtuous,  and 
harboureth  in  his  mind  as  many  good  qualities  as  his  face  is 
shadowed  with  gracious  favours;  and  therefore,  Rosalynde, 
stoop  to  love,  lest,  being  either  too  coy  or  too  cruel,  Venus 
wax  wroth,  and  plague  thee  with  the  reward  of  disdain." 

Rosalynde,  thus  passionate,  was  wakened  from  her  dumps 
by  Aliena,  who  said  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed. 

It  is  evident  that  Lodge  in  technique  of  euphuistic  style 
has  made  an  improvement  on  that  of  Greene.  It  seems 
as  if  Lodge,  fascinated  by  Greene's  shepherdess  Fawnia, 
who  is  a  princess  by  birth  but  is  not  aware  of  it,  has  lifted 
the  sweet  girl  with  her  passionate  language  of  humility 
into  the  more  powerful  characterization  of  his  own 
princess  Rosalynde,  who  speaks  a  language  that  befits 
her  proud  mentality.  Rosalynde  when  compared  with 
Fawnia  seems  always  to  have  a  holier  nimbus  about  her 
head.  After  examining  the  elements  of  style  applied  by 
Lodge  to  Rosalynde's  speech,  we  feel  that  it  is  ready  for 
the  leaven-like  ornamentation  of  respiritualized  euphuism 
such  as  delicately  and  rhythmically  falls  in  perfect  char- 
acterizing power  from  the  lips  of  Shakespeare's  Rosalind, 
the  wonderful  composite  of  Helen,  Atalanta,  Cleopatra, 
and  Lucrece. 

Thomas  Lodge, 'a  graduate  of  Oxford,  and  a  one-time 
fellow-student  with  John  Lyly,  wrote  such  novels  as 
The  Delectable  Historic  of  Forbonius  and  Priscera  (1584); 
Rosalynde,  Enphues1  Golden  Legacy  (1590);  Life  and 
Death  of  William  Longbeard  (1593),  and  A  Mar gar ite  of 
America  (1596).  While  on  a  free-booting  expedition  to  the 
Azores  and  Canaries  he  wrote  a  classic,  which  is  flavored 

/ 


34  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

with  the  wildness  of  the  tossing  surge  that  he  said  wetted 
every  line  of  his  forest-of-Arden  story  into  which,  as  I 
think,  there  crept  something  too  of  his  own  marauder, 
outlaw  life.  The  source  of  Rosalynde  is  the  Tale  of 
Gamelyn,  a  Robin  Hood  ballad  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
Lodge's  original  contributions  to  the  old  tale  are  the  plot 
of  the  two  kings  and  an  enthralling  story  of  love,  which  is 
vitalized  by  its  idyllic  atmosphere.  His  pastoral  romance 
is  a  little  picture  of  ideal  life  realized,  with  nature  in  the 
background  presenting  the  antithesis  of  the  homely  and 
the  heroic.  As  Robert  Greene  in  his  romances  and  lyrics 
cried  out  for  simple  country  life  remembered  from  boy- 
hood days  so  Thomas  Lodge  in  Rosalynde  voiced  this 
longing,  on  the  part  of  cultured  Elizabethans  in  artificial 
court  and  city,  for  the  genuine.  One-fourth  of  the  action 
of  Lodge's  masterpiece  takes  place  away  from  the  forest 
of  Arden;  and,  in  Shakespeare's  As  You  Like  It,  there  are 
only  three  or  four  indoor  scenes  which  carry  the  onlooker 
away  from  the  forest  of  Arden.  Everything  is  so  skilfully 
managed  by  both  artists  that,  under  the  wand  waved  of 
their  enchantment,  we  feel  every  second  as  if  the  entire 
action  in  both  productions  is  taking  place  under  the  um- 
brageous boughs  of  their  magical  forest.  In  his  classic, 
Lodge  is  at  his  best  where  Rosalynde  for  the  first  time 
since  she  had  gazed  upon  Rosader  in  the  wrestling-match 
meets  him  in  the  forest  of  Arden;  and,  in  their  ensuing 
dialogue,  the  thrust  of  rapier-like  repartee  is  far  ahead  of 
anything  of  the  kind  that  we  have  had  in  Greene's  fiction. 
Even  the  characterizing  dialogue  in  Pandosto  which  de- 
picts Dorastus  in  his  wonderful  love-making  with  Fawnia 
does  not  quite  equal  it.  When  Lodge  is  writing  at  a  white 
heat  of  inspiration  he  surpasses  Greene  in  pointing  language 
with  an  euphuistic  stiletto.  Lodge  is  also  superior  to 
Greene  in  the  artistic  handling  of  the  disguise  of  per- 
sonality; for  Rosalynde,  in  page's  apparel,  is  far  ahead  of 


Sidney's  "Arcadia"  35 

Mamillia  in  her  garb  of  disguise  in  the  court  room  of 
Saragossa.  In  plot  there  is  little  that  is  intricate  in 
RosaJynde;  therefore,  the  novel  is  a  marked  advance  upon 
the  tortuous  that  is  prevalent  in  Greene's  romance. 
Thus  we  can  understand  how  Shakespeare  out  of  Lodge's 
Rosalynde  created  As  You  Like  It  a  play  much  greater 
than  the  other  drama  that  he  afterwards  fashioned  from 
Greene's  Pandosto  which  he  called  The  Winter's  Tale. 

In  1590,  the  year  that  Lodge's  Rosalynde  appeared,  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  an  Oxford  University  man,  published  the 
Arcadia,  which  he  had  written  in  1580  for  his  sister's  eye 
alone  when  fallen  under  the  Queen's  displeasure  he  had 
withdrawn  from  the  court  to  reside  in  Wilton  near  Salis- 
bury. The  plot  of  the  novel,  a  mixture  of  pastoral  and 
heroic  romance,  consisting  of  the  adventures  of  Musidorus, 
Prince  of  Thessaly,  and  Pyrocles,  Prince  of  Macedon,  as 
they  play  for  the  love  of  Pamela  and  Philoclea,  daughters 
of  King  Basilius  of  Arcadia  and  his  wife  Gynecia,  shows 
that  its  author  largely  used  Jacopo  Sannazaro's  Arcadia 
(1504)  for  a  model  as  well  as  George  de  Montemayor's 
Diana  Enamorada  (1552).  Sidney,  in  this  piece  of  fiction 
containing  digressions  sufficient  for  a  dozen  novels,  was 
susceptible  to  the  pressure  of  a  heavy  pastoral  atmosphere 
which  had  settled  down  over  the  works  of  the  decade 
permeating  such  novels  as  Greene's  Pandosto  (1588), 
Menaphon  (1589),  and  Never  Too  Late  (1590).  In  Mena- 
phon  Sephestia  (Samela)  conforms  to  the  background  of 
pastoral  life  just  as  Rosalynde  in  Lodge's  Rosalynde 
(1590).  In  these  four  novels,  as  well  as  in  Sidney's  Ar- 
cadia, breezes  are  constantly  blowing  from  "the  dales  of 
Arcady. "  The  Arcadia,  when  it  appeared,  was  adorned 
in  a  style  more  flowery  than  that  which  had  been  used  by 
any  of  Sidney's  predecessors  and  contemporaries.  For  its 
strength  and  weakness  it  fell  back  upon  the  old  euphuistic 
devices  and  conceits.     Still,  in  spite  of  stylistic  faults  at 


36  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

times  appearing,  when  Sidney's  language  moves  in  the 
power  of  the  pathetic  to  delineate  the  constancy  of  the 
love  between  Argalus  and  Parthenia  and  the  beauty  of 
their  fate,  it  is  not  as  some  suppose  "poetry  gone  mad" 
but  poetic  prose  sublimed  by  a  simplicity  that  has  shorn 
it  of  all  concettism. 

After  Musidorus  (Palladius)  arrived  in  Arcadia  the 
Kalander's  steward  began  to  tell  him  a  story  which  was 
to  be  the  most  delicate  and  at  the  same  time  richest  vein 
in  the  gold  mine  of  Sidney's  Arcadia.  When  Gynecia 
had  been  married  to  Basilius  there  had  come  with  her  into 
Arcadia  Argalus,  a  young  knight,  her  cousin  germane, 
who  fell  in  love  with  the  beautiful  girl,  Parthenia,  whose 
mother,  like  Scott's  Lady  Ashton,  had  coerced  her 
daughter  into  an  engagement  with  Demagoras  of  Laconia. 
Parthenia  with  more  will-power  than  that  possessed  by 
ill-fated  Lucy  Ashton  resisted  her  mother  and  would 
marry  Argalus,  the  man  she  loved.  Then  Argalus,  happy 
in  his  approaching  marriage  with  Parthenia,  went  into  his 
own  country  to  bring  friends  to  the  wedding.  While 
Argalus  was  absent,  Demagoras  seized  Parthenia  and 
rubbed  a  poison  over  her  face  so  that  it  destroyed  her 
beauty  making  her  uglier  than  the  most  loathsome  leper. 
When  Argalus  returned,  he  was  still  willing  to  have 
Parthenia  for  his  wife  but  she,  resolving  not  to  blight  his 
career  by  such  a  marriage,  rejected  his  entreaties  and  fled 
the  country.  Argalus  sought  her  in  many  places  but  could 
not  find  her.  At  length  he  made  his  way  to  the  house  of 
the  Kalander;  and  it  is  at  this  point  that  the  story  of 
Argalus  and  Parthenia  connects  itself  with  the  major 
thread  of  the  narrative  of  the  Arcadia.  It  was  here  in  the 
Kalander's  home  that  a  beautiful  woman  came  claiming 
that  she  was  kinswoman  to  the  fair  Helen,  Queen  of 
Corinth,  and  told  Argalus,  who  did  not  recognize  her  at  all, 
that  once,  when  she  had  been  left  in  command  of  the  court 


Sidney's  "Arcadia"  37 

of  Corinth  because  of  Queen  Helen's  absence,  there  had 
come  into  her  presence  the  disfigured  Parthenia,  for  whose 
misery  she  had  been  most  compassionate,  and  from  whom 
she  had  been  able  to  obtain  an  account  of  her  whole 
tragical  history.  Then,  after  relating  such,  Parthenia 
had  requested  her  to  carry  a  certain  ring  to  Argalus  and 
to  tell  him  that  it  was  Parthenia's  dying  wish  that  he 
should  marry  the  bringer  of  the  ring.  This  beautiful 
woman  after  relating  all  this  informed  Argalus  that 
Parthenia  was  dead.  Argalus  was  not  responsive  to  this 
beautiful  kinswoman  of  Queen  Helen  because  he  could  not 
befoul  his  undying  love  for  Parthenia  by  marrying  her. 
Then  it  was  that  the  beauty  before  him  disclosed  herself 
as  the  long-lost  Parthenia  who  further  explained  how  her 
beauty  had  been  restored  by  the  miraculous  treatment  of 
Queen  Helen's  physician.  Straightway  the  long-separated 
lovers  became  one  in  the  nuptial  ceremony  that  was  per- 
formed in  the  Kalander's  house.  It  was  not  a  great  while 
after  this  until  Argalus  was  summoned  to  the  war  in 
which  he  was  killed  by  Amphialus.  As  a  result  Parthenia 
was  plunged  into  the  depths  of  despair.  Soon  Amphialus 
was  challenged  by  the  Knight  of  the  Tomb;  Amphialus 
accepted,  and  the  jousting  immediately  took  place,  the 
Knight  of  the  Tomb  keeping  as  silent  as  the  ghastly  figure 
of  death  at  the  close  of  Tennyson's  Gareth  and  Lynette. 
At  last  Amphialus  gave  the  Knight  of  the  Tomb  a  great 
mortal  wound  in  the  neck;  and,  as  the  victor,  proceeded 
to  unhelmet  his  victim. 

But  the  head-piece  was  no  sooner  off,  but  that  there  fell 
about  the  shoulders  of  the  overcome  Knight  the  treasure  of 
fair  golden  hair,  which  with  the  face  (soon  known  by  the 
badge  of  excellency)  witnessed  that  it  was  Parthenia,  the 
unfortunately  virtuous  wife  of  Argalus:  her  beauty  then  even 
in  despite  of  the  passed  sorrow,  or  coming  death,  assuring  all 
beholders,  that  it  was  nothing  short  of  perfection.     For  her 


38  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

exceeding  fair  eyes,  having  with  continual  weeping  gotten  a 
little  redness  about  them;  her  roundly  sweetly  swelling  lips  a 
little  trembling,  as  though  they  kissed  their  neighbor  death; 
in  her  cheeks  the  whiteness  striving  by  little  and  little  to  get 
upon  the  rosiness  of  them;  her  neck,  a  neck  indeed  of  alabaster, 
displaying  the  wound,  which  with  most  dainty  blood  laboured 
to  drown  his  own  beauties;  so  as  here  was  a  river  of  purest 
red,  there  an  island  of  perfittest  white,  each  giving  lustre  to 
the  other;  with  the  sweet  countenance  (God  knows)  full  of  an 
unaffected  languishing:  though  these  things  to  a  grossly 
conceiving  sense  might  seem  disgraces;  yet  indeed  were  they 
but  appareling  beauty  in  a  new  fashion,  which  all  looked  upon 
thorough  the  spectacles  of  pity,  did  ever  increase  the  lines  of 
her  natural  fairness,  so  as  Amphialus  was  astonished  with 
grief,  compassion,  and  shame,  detesting  his  fortune,  that 
made  him  unfortunate  in  victory. 

Therefore,  putting  off  his  head-piece  and  gauntlet;  kneeling 
down  unto  her  and  with  tears  testifying  his  sorrow,  he  offered 
his  (by  himself  accursed)  hands  to  help  her :  protesting  his  life 
and  power  to  be  ready  to  do  her  honour :  But  Parthenia  (who 
had  inward  messengers  of  the  desired  death's  approach) 
looking  upon  him,  and  straight  away  her  feeble  sight,  as 
from  a  delightless  object,  drawing  out  her  words,  which  her 
breath  (loath  to  part  from  so  sweet  a  body)  did  faintly  deliver, 
Sir  (said  she)  I  pray  you  (if  prayers  have  place  in  enemies) 
to  let  my  maids  take  my  body  untouched  by  you:  the  only 
honour  I  now  desire  by  your  means,  is,  that  I  have  no  honour 
of  you.  Argalus  made  no  such  bargain  with  you,  that  the 
hands  which  killed  him,  should  help  me.  I  have  of  them  (and 
I  do  not  only  pardon  you,  but  thank  you  for  it)  the  service 
which  I  desired.  There  rests  nothing  now,  but  that  I  go  live 
with  him,  since  whose  death  I  have  done  nothing  but  die. 
Then  pausing,  and  a  little  fainting,  and  again  coming  to  herself, 
O  sweet  life,  welcome  (said  she)  now  feel  I  the  bands  untied 
of  the  cruel  death,  which  so  long  hath  held  me.  And  0  life, 
O  death,  answer  for  me,  that  my  thoughts  have  not  so  much 
as  in  a  dream  tasted  any  comfort ;  since  they  were  deprived  of 
Argalus.    I  come,  my  Argalus,  I  come:  And,  O  God  hide  my 


Sidney's  "Arcadia"  39 

faults  p.  thy  mercies,  and  grant  (  as  I  feel  thou  dost  grant) 
that  in  thy  eternal  love,  we  may  love  each  other  eternally. 
And  this  O  Lorde:  But  there  Atropos  cut  oil  her  sentence:  for 
with'  that,  casting  up  both  eyes  and  hands  to  the  skies,  the 
noble  soul  departed  (one  might  well  assure  himself)  to  heaven, 
which  left  the  bodie  in  so  heavenly  a  demeanor. 


It  seems  to  me  from  the  point  of  view  of  style  that  there 
is  no  finer  narrative  in  all  the  Arcadia  than  that  which 
contains  the  description  of  the  death  of  Parthenia.  It 
seems  as  if  Sidney  had  at  last  accidentally  stumbled  upon 
a  fluidity  of  fine  form  and  tone  as  an  outcome  of  his 
experimenting  with  a  vernacular,  the  capacities  of  which 
could  be  unfolded  into  the  rich,  the  plastic,  and  the 
imaginative.  Not  since  the  utterances  of  Malory's  dying 
maid  of  Astolat  had  there  been  such  an  exquisite  craping 
of  poetic  prose. 

Technically  the  whole  novel  is  a  series  of  blows — a  series 
of  steady  pressures  on  points  emphasizing  surprise  and 
contrast — to  throw  the  reader  into  a  pastoral  fairyland 
of  stage  delight.  By  means  of  posing  as  the  kinswoman 
of  the  Queen  of  Corinth,  Parthenia  tests  the  sincerity  of 
Argalus's  love.  This  feminine  love  of  disguise  is  reminis- 
cent of  Greene's  Mamillia  and  Lodge's  Rosalynde.  We 
also  see  Prince  Pyrocles  disguising  himself  as  the  Amazon 
Zelmane.  Another  surprise  noticed  at  the  end  of  the 
Arcadia  is  Sidney's  ethical  trick  which  has  been  so  often 
employed  by  our  modern  novelists  to  bring  a  woman  or  a 
man  morally  dead  back  to  life.  Gynecia  determines  to 
check  her  guilty  love  for  Pyrocles  and  promises  to  become 
a  dutiful  wife  to  her  husband  King  Basilius,  who  does  not 
refuse  ivory  the  chance  of  turning  from  black  to  everlasting 
white.  Another  thing  noticeable  in  the  novel  is  the  mark 
of  the  lion's  paw  upon  the  neck  of  a  certain  man,  whose 
birth  and  identity  are  thus  revealed;  this  projects  us  as 


40  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

far  as  to  Fielding's  Joseph  Andrews,  who  ceases  to  be  an 
unknown  foundling  when  his  father  recognizes  the  straw- 
berry birthmark  on  his  breast.  This  device  for  the  identi- 
fication of  a  hero  is  worked  to  a  nicety  in  Mrs.  Ann 
Radcliffe's  Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne  (1789)  and  in 
Mrs.  Charlotte  Lennox's  Euphemia  (1790), where  the  birth- 
mark happens  to  be  a  bow  and  arrow  on  the  boy's  left 
breast  due  to  the  scare  that  his  mother  received  from  the 
North  American  Indians.  A  greater  thing  to  note,  how- 
ever, is  the  pornographic  work  which  caused  Nat  Ingelo  to 
write  in  his  preface  to  Bentivolio  and  Urania  (1660)  "but 
this  sort  of  book  is  most  to  be  blamed.  .  .  .  For  some 
such  reason,  I  suppose,  the  great  Sidney  before  his  death 
charg'd  his  friend  Sir  Fulk  Grevill,  who  had  the  onely 
copy  of  his  Arcadia,  that  he  should  never  permit  it  to  be 
made  publick. ' '  Still  this  sensuous  beauty  of  workman- 
ship had  always  been  in  English  fiction.  Ascham  had 
averred  that  Malory's  Le  Morte  Darthur  was  filled  with 
nothing  but  slaughters  and  adulteries.  The  waves  that 
are  jealous  of  their  position  in  the  river  Ladon  when  the 
bathing  Philoclea  fascinates  them  with  the  beauty  of  her 
flesh  at  least  do  not  turn  as  red  as  the  blush  that  suffuses 
our  cheeks  when  we  are  reading  a  certain  part  of  Emanuel 
Ford's  Parismus,  the  Renowned  Prince  of  Bohemia  (1598) 
or  become  as  crimson  as  when  we  are  reading  to-day  Mrs. 
Harrison's  Adrian  Savage  (191 1),  where  the  pornographic 
is  all  the  worse  because  of  the  morbid  veil  concealing  it. 

In  fact  Sidney's  Arcadia  has  never  ceased  to  influence 
our  fiction  for  good  and  for  ill;  and  it  was  thus  that  it 
affected  Henry  Chettle's  Piers  Plainness  seaven  yeres 
Prentiskip  (1595),  Lady  Mary  Wroth's  Urania  (1621). 
George  Mackensie's  Aretina  (1661),  Roger  Boyle's  Par- 
thenissa  (1664,  1665,  1677),  and  John  Crowne's  Pandion 
and  Amphigeneia  (1665).  In  final  retrospect  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  Arcadia  shows  how  Sidney  with  his  many- 


Nash's  "Life  of  Jack  Wilton"  4* 

sided  brain  teeming  with  imagination  viewed  things  from 
all  sides  at  once.  The  novel  is  too  infinite  in  its  relations 
between  cause  and  consequence  to  make  one  regard  Sidney 
as  a  scientific  novelist;  and  its  interspersed  experimenta- 
tions in  grafting  contemporary  Italian  metrical  forms  on 
to  English  verse  in  all  probability  kept  him  from  being  a 
greater  poet ;  but  its  flowing  and  graceful  style  will  always 
endear  the  grandson  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  and 
nephew  of  Leicester  to  those  who  sense  the  need  of  the 
restoration  of  some  of  the  excellence  of  such  a  style  to 
modern  fiction. 

Thomas  Nash,  dramatist  and  pamphleteer,  in  1594 
created  The  Unfortunate  Traveller,  or  the  Life  of  Jack 
Wilton,  a  picaresque,  historical  novel,  the  hero  of  which  is 
Jack  Wilton,  a  gentleman  of  fortune,  who  is  first  seen 
serving  as  page  in  the  camp  of  Henry  VIII  at  the  siege  of 
Tournay.  Throughout  the  story  there  is  an  occasional 
streak  of  sunshine  of  genial  humor  as  when  swaggering 
Jack  bamboozles  the  purveyor  of  drink  or  when,  with 
Diamante,  the  Venetian  beauty,  he  travels  palming 
himself  off  as  Lord  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey;  but 
generally  the  sky  is  dark  lending  a  blood-and-thunder 
background  to  reveal  such  an  appalling  scene  as  that  in 
which  Cut  wolf  wreaks  vengeance  on  Esdras  of  Granada. 
As  Hamlet  killed  Claudius  in  a  trick  in  which  there  was 
no  relish  of  salvation  so  Cutwolf  murdered  Esdras  at  the 
moment,  when,  praying  to  God  to  have  his  life  spared,  he 
had  been  forced  by  the  assassin  to  deny  his  Creator. 
Some  of  this  same  bloodthirstiness  is  found  in  Defoe's 
Bob  Singleton  and  in  Stevenson's  James  Durie,  who, 
after  escaping  from  the  pirates  of  whom  he  had  been  the 
leader,  kills  one  of  his  companions  in  the  slough  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  he  considered  him  as  a  somewhat 
excessive  bit  of  baggage  to  carry.  The  meritorious,  his- 
trionic part  of  Nash's  novel  is  the  description  of  how  the 


42  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

real  Earl  of  Surrey  overtakes  Jack  Wilton  and  Diamante 
at  Florence,  where  they  are  supping  like  Antony  and 
Cleopatra.  Jack  is  in  a  cold  sweat  bestilled  to  jelly  but 
defends  himself  well  because  the  Earl  and  he  had  agreed 
at  Wittenberg  to  exchange  names  so  that  Surrey  could 
have  "more  liberty  of  behaviour  without  danger  of 
reproach."  Then,  too,  how  could  the  enraged  Earl  creep 
around  behind  the  rampart  of  the  defense  thrown  up  by 
Jack,  who  avers  that  he  was  highly  honoring  the  Earl  by 
traveling  in  this  style  on  the  Continent  since  it  was  being 
conducted  with  more  splendor  than  that  which  he  had 
ever  seen  the  Earl  put  on.  At  one  time  the  Earl  had  made 
poetic  love  to  Diamante  in  the  Venetian  prison  when  Jack 
and  he  had  been  confined  there  together  on  the  charge  of 
counterfeiting.  Surrey  had  then  called  this  Diamante 
his  poetic  Geraldine,  but  now  it  was  too  much  for  him 
to  see  this  wife  of  Castaldo's  perpetually  clinging  to 
Jack,  whom  the  public  thought  to  be  the  real  Earl.  In  a 
most  humorous  way  Jack  concedes  to  the  Earl's  request, 
giving  up  the  assumed  earldom  and  retaining  his  bene- 
factress, who  by  means  of  her  husband's  gold  had  made 
possible  the  successful  posing  of  himself  as  the  Earl  of 
Surrey.  Thereafter,  throughout  the  novel,  he  and  Dia- 
mante refuse  to  be  separated.  The  adventurous  Jack 
who  makes  the  Continent  his  field  of  action  is  an  antici- 
pator of  Defoe's  Captain  Singleton,  who  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  not  only  visits  Italy,  but  Africa, 
South  America,  and  even  Bassorah  and  Bagdad,  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  Asia  to  be  visited  by  Hope's  Anastasius 
and  Morier's  Hajji  Baba  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
and  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  At  the 
close  of  the  novel  Jack  Wilton,  a  good  deal  like  Stevenson's 
Captain  Silver,  emerged  from  all  his  deviltries  to  live  in 
wealth  and  seeming  happiness. 

Nash  ventured  into  that  district,  in  which  moved  the 


Deloney's  "Thomas  of  Reading"         43 

coney-catching  canaille  with  whom  Greene  had  lived  and 
whom  no  man  knew  better,  and  came  forth  to  hang  in  the 
rogues'  gallery  next  to  the  sketches  of  Clarynda,  Infida, 
and  Lamilia  the  picture  of  Diamante;  and  high  above 
these  female  rogues  he  framed  the  portrait  of  Jack  Wilton, 
standing  on  the  boundary  line  between  personage  and 
personality,  a  chevalier  of  fortune,  such  as  the  gallery 
heretofore  had  not  possessed.  Thus  Nash  helped  to 
develop  the  rogue  who  was  to  thrive  in  English  fiction 
from  Richard  Head  and  Francis  Kirkman's  The  English 
Rogue  (1665-80)  and  Bunyan's  The  Life  and  Death  of  Mr. 
Badman  (1680)  down  to  Fielding's  great  man  Jonathan 
Wild,  who  went  to  the  gallows  amid  a  mass  of  debris  shot 
at  him  by  an  enraged  community,  and  who  afterwards 
leaped  from  his  grave  to  electrify  the  elements  that 
Thackeray  put  into  Barry  Lyndon  and  Lord  Steyne. 

The  web  of  the  historical  with  its  thread  of  Gothicism 
made  red  by  Esdras's  blood  serves  to  move  us  on  to  the 
study  of  the  texture  of  The  Pleasant  Historic  of  Thomas  of 
Reading  (1596).  The  silk- weaver  Thomas  Deloney  after 
composing  this  novel  wrote  Jack  of  Newbury  (1597)  and 
Gentlccraft  (1597),  which  consists  of  six  stories:  (1)  "Sir 
Hugh  " ;  (2)  "  Crispine  and  Crispinus  " ;  (3)  "  Simon  Eyre ' ' ; 
(4)  "Richard  Casteler";  (5)  "Master  Peachey  and  His 
Men";  and  (6)  "Anthony  Now-now. "  In  Thomas  of 
Reading  Deloney  first  portrays  nine  clothiers,  six  from  the 
West  of  England  and  three  from  the  North,  who  are  under 
the  special  favor  of  Henry  I,  and  then  being  fond  of  old 
London,  especially  that  part  which  supported  his  trade, 
he  reveals  Cheapside,  with  its  shops  of  the  goldsmiths 
and  the  silk-merchants,  and  Watling  Street  with  its 
drapers  and  St.  Martin's  with  its  shoemakers.  At  St. 
Nicholas  Church  there  is  a  brief  inspection  of  the  flesh- 
shambles  ;  and  at  the  old  Change  there  is  a  glimpse  caught 
of   the  fish-mongers.     Weavers   are   seen   rushing   along 


44  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Candleweak  Street  and  clothiers  congregating  at  Black  - 
wel-hall.  Proceeding  from  this  place  to  St.  Paul's  Church 
Deloney  stops  to  point  out  the  weather-cock  on  the 
steeple,  and  passing  from  thence  he  asks  us  to  contemplate 
the  Tower  of  London.  Then  the  novelist  shifts  the  scenery 
from  the  city  to  Gloucestershire  so  as  to  individualize 
fair  Margaret,  the  banished  Earl  of  Shrewsbury's  daugh- 
ter, as  in  a  red  petticoat  she  trips  along  under  a  broad 
straw  hat  and  with  a  hayfork  in  her  hand  to  the  harvest 
field.  As  she  goes  to  the  haymaking  we  see  her  accosted 
by  Duke  Robert,  the  King's  brother,  who  had  been  making 
love  to  the  rural  maiden.  We  then  accompany  them  to 
the  field  to  listen  to  the  wooing  that  finally  made  Mar- 
garet trust  her  heart  to  Duke  Robert.  The  King  is  at 
last  aware  that  Duke  Robert  intends  to  make  Margaret 
his  wife  and  orders  that  his  eyes  be  put  out  and  that 
Margaret  be  put  in  prison  under  sentence  of  death.  A 
little  later  as  she  passes  to  execution  a  pardon  comes  from 
the  King,  but  she  is  not  to  pass  to  liberty  without  one 
punishment,  that  of  seeing  her  lover's  eyes  put  out.  And 
in  Cardiffe  Castle  she  sees  Robert  brought  forth  to  lose  his 
eyes;  and  the  next  scene  which  closes  the  novel  is  that 
which  shows  Margaret  in  the  act  of  taking  the  veil  in  the 
Abbey  at  Gloucester.  Thomas  Deloney  elaborates  her 
becoming  a  nun  with  all  the  pomp  and  ceremony  of  the 
Catholic  Church  at  that  time.  There  is  no  better  scenic 
description  of  taking  the  veil  until  we  come  to  Ellena  di 
Rosalba  about  to  take  the  veil  in  the  .convent  of  San 
Stefano  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  The  Italian  (1797)  or  to  Emily 
Arundel,  taking  it  in  all  gorgeousness  in  the  chapel  of 
St.  Valerie  near  Naples  in  Letitia  Landon's  Romance  and 
Reality  (1831). 

The  description  of  the  murder  of  Thomas  Cole  of 
Reading  at  Colebrooke  preceded  by  all  kinds  of  ill  omens 
and  solemn  music  is  Thomas  Deloney's  masterpiece  in 


Dcloney's  "Thomas  of  Reading"         45 

scenic  technique,  though  it  is  not  at  all  characteristic  of 
the  type  of  his  bourgeois  fiction.  Thomas  Deloney  in  the 
Inn  at  Colebrooke  depicts  a  wicked  host  and  hostess  who 
made  their  living  by  cutting  the  throats  of  their  fat  pigs, 
— transient  patrons.  By  a  tremendous  flashlight  of  genius 
we  see  weaver  Cole  going  willy-nilly  from  his  bed  to  the 
cauldron  of  boiling  liquor. 

.  .  With  that  certaine  Musicians  of  the  towne  came  to 
the  Chamber,  and  knowing  Master  Cole  was  there,  drue  out 
their  instruments,  and  very  solemnly  began  to  play. 

This  musicke  comes  very  well  (said  Cole)  and  when  he  had 
listned  a  while  thereunto,  he  said,  Me  thinks  these  instrumets 
sound  like  the  ring  of  St.  Mary  Oueries  bells,  but  the  Base 
drowns  all  the  rest:  and  in  my  eare  it  goes  like  a  bell  that  rings 
a  forenoones  knell,  for  Gods  sake  let  them  leaue  off,  and  beare 
them  this  simple  reward.  The  Musicians  being  gone,  his 
Oast  asked  if  now  it  would  please  him  to  goe  to  bed;  for 
(quoth  he)  it  is  welneere  eleuen  of  the  clocke. 

With  that  Cole  beholding  his  Oast  and  Oastesse  earnestly, 
began  to  start  backe,  saying,  what  aile  you  to  looke  so  like  pale 
death?  good  Lord,  what  haue  you  done,  that  your  hands  are 
thus  bloody?  What  my  hands,  said  his  Oast?  Why,  you  may 
see  they  are  neither  bloody  nor  f  oule :  either  your  eyes  doe  greatly 
dazell,  or  else  fancies  of  a  troubled  minde  doe  delude  you. 

Alas,  my  Oast,  you  may  see,  said  hee,  how  weake  my  wits 
are,  I  neuer  had  my  head  so  idle  before.  Come,  let  me  drinke 
once  more,  and  then  I  will  to  bed,  and  trouble  you  no  longer. 
With  that  hee  made  himself e  vnready,  and  his  Oastesse  was 
very  diligent  to  warme  a  kerchiffe,  and  put  it  about  his  head. 
Good  Lord,  said  he,  I  am  not  sicke,  I  praise  God,  but  such  an 
alteration  I  finde  in  my  selfe  as  I  neuer  did  before. 

With  that  the  scritch-owle  cried  pitiously,  and  anon  after 
the  night-rauen  sate  croaking  hard  by  his  window.  Iesu  haue 
mercy  vpon  me,  quoth  hee,  what  an  ill-fauoured  cry  doe 
yonder  carrion  birds  make,  and  therewithall  he  laid  him  downe 
in  his  bed,  from  whence  he  neuer  rose  againe. 


46  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

His  Oast  and  Oastesse,  that  all  this  while  noted  his  troubled 
mind,  began  to  commune  betwixt  themselues  thereof.  And 
the  man  said,  he  knew  not  what  were  best  to  be  done.  By 
my  consent  (quoth  he)  the  matter  should  passe,  for  I  thinke 
it  is  not  best  to  meddle  on  him.  What  man  (quoth  she)  faint 
you  now?  haue  you  done  so  many  and  do  you  shrinke  at 
this?  Then  shewing  him  a  great  deale  of  gold  which  Cole 
had  left  with  her,  she  said,  Would  it  not  grieue  a  bodies 
heart  to  lose  this?  hang  the  old  churle,  what  should  he  doe 
liuing  any  longer?  he  hath  too  much,  and  we  haue  too  little: 
tut  husband,  let  the  thing  be  done,  and  then  this  is  our 
owne. 

Her  wicked  counsell  was  followed,  and  when  they  had  listned 
at  his  chamber  doore,  they  heard  the  man  sound  asleepe: 
All  is  safe,  quoth  they,  and  downe  into  the  kitchin  they  goe, 
their  seruants  being  all  in  bed,  and  pulling  out  the  yron  pins, 
downe  fell  the  bed,  and  the  man  dropt  out  into  the  boyling 
caldron.  He  being  dead,  they  betwixt  them  cast  his  body  into 
the  riuer,  his  clothes  they  made  away,  and  made  all  things  as 
it  should  be.  .  .  . 


In  this  part  of  the  novel  is  seen  the  birth  of  the  horrible 
Gothic  romance  spider  which  spins  the  red  thread  wThich 
was  to  run  its  course  of  increasing  terror  past  the  inn- 
keeperess  and  the  robbers,  who  made  midnight  interesting 
for  the  Count  in  Smollett's  Adventures  of  Ferdinand, 
Count  Fathom  (1753),  past  the  vacant  stare  in  Melmoth's 
eye  until  it  made  out  of  itself  the  many  threads  in  the 
gigantic  web  of  wholesale  murder  in  the  roadhouse,  where 
Gerard  and  his  companions  saved  themselves  by  phos- 
phorescent La  Mort  in  Charles  Reade's  The  Cloister  and 
the  Hearth  (1861). 

The  New  Atlantis  (1627)  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon's  retroacts 
through  Barclay's  Argenis  (1621)  to  More's  Utopia  (1516) 
and  swings  one  past  Harrington's  Oceana  (1656)  to  Swift's 
' '  A  Voyage  to  Laputa ' '  in  Gulliver's  Travels  ( 1 726) .    Bacon 


Bacon's  "New  Atlantis"  47 

selects  an  island,  the  New  Atlantis  imaginatively  situated 
between  America  and  China,  and  upon  it  stages  ideas  and 
moods  on  the  moral  sciences,  which  are  under  the  control 
of  a  government  of  knowledge  that  sought  nature  as  a 
means  by  which  to  relieve  and  cure  evils  afflicting  hu- 
manity. Bacon  left  his  novel  a  mighty  torso  because  the 
policy  of  the  court  of  the  Stuarts  was  antagonistic  to 
such  a  humanitarian  scheme  as  founding  a  college  of 
scientific  research.  By  means  of  this  legacy  of  the  New 
Atlantis,  however,  the  scientific  men  in  England  after- 
wards founded  the  Royal  Society. 

Bacon's  style  in  this  fragment,  the  pattern  of  which  is 
stamped  everywhere  with  the  sign  of  the  cross,  attains 
the  level  of  excellence  of  Defoe  and  Swift  when  they  are 
at  their  best  in  circumstantial  description.  A  vast  gain 
has  been  made  by  Bacon  in  subtly  modifying  the  first 
person  method  of  narration;  and  the  closeness  of  detail 
work  in  coloring  and  numbering  objects  has  been  most 
skilfully  attended  to  so  as  not  to  interfere  in  the  slightest 
degree  with  the  movement  of  the  incidents.  The  temporal 
element  moves  with  a  punctuality  that  has  been  secured 
by  a  consultation  of  the  hours  on  the  face  of  a  clock. 
Sailing  from  Peru  we  are  hurried  with  the  utmost  rapidity 
to  the  island  in  the  Pacific,  to  the  cross,  and  to  the  sub- 
sequent question  "Are  ye  Christians?"  The  ship  is  not 
long  in  quarantine,  and  by  the  name  of  Jesus  and  his 
merits  we  pass  ashore  to  visit  the  Strangers'  House 
wherein  we  are  led  to  the  Infirmary  for  sick  persons.  We 
see  a  small  red  cross  on  the  top  of  a  white  turban  and  by 
the  Christian  priest  under  it  with  tears  of  tenderness  in  his 
eyes  are  reminded  of  our  modern  Red  Cross  Society.  We 
swiftly  pass  to  the  account  from  the  Governor  of  Ben- 
salem  of  how  the  island  was  Christianized  twenty  years 
after  the  ascension  of  our  Saviour;  and  it  is  then  that  the 
narrative  leaps  resplendcntly  high  as  it  moves  us  out  to 


48  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

sea  to  observe  the  great  pillar  of  light  on  top  of  which  is  a 
flaming  cross. 

About  twenty  Yeares  after  the  Ascension  of  our  Saviour,  it 
came  to  passe,  that  ther  was  seen  by  the  People  of  Renfusa, 
(a  Citty  upon  the  Easterne  Coast  of  our  Island,)  within  Night, 
(the  Night  was  Cloudy,  and  Calme,)  as  it  might  be  some  mile 
into  the  Sea,  a  great  Pillar  of  Light;  Not  sharp,  but  in  forme 
of  a  Columne,  or  Cylinder,  rising  from  the  Sea,  a  great  way 
up  towards  Heaven;  and  on  the  topp  of  it  was  seene  a  large 
Crosse  of  Light,  more  bright  and  resplendent  then  the  Body 
of  the  Pillar.  Upon  which  so  strange  a  Spectacle,  the  People 
of  the  Citty  gathered  apace  together  upon  the  Sands,  to 
wonder;  And  so  after  put  themselves  into  a  number  of  small 
Boates,  to  goe  nearer  to  this  Marveilous  sight.  But  when  the 
Boates  were  come  within  (about)  60  yeards  of  the  Pillar,  they 
found  themselves  all  bound,  and  could  goe  no  further;  yet  so 
as  they  might  move  to  goe  about,  but  might  not  approach 
nearer:  So  as  the  Boates  stood  all  as  in  a  Theater,  beholding 
this  Light,  as  an  Heavenly  Signe.  It  so  fell  out,  that  ther  was 
in  one  of  the  Boates  one  of  our  Wise  Men,  of  the  Society  of 
Salomons  House;  which  House,  or  Colledge  (my  good  Brethren) 
is  the  very  Eye  of  this  Kingdome;  Who  having  a  while  atten- 
tively and  devoutly  viewed  and  contemplated  this  Pillar  and 
Crosse,  fell  downe  upon  his  face;  And  then  raysed  himselfe 
upon  his  knees,  and  lifting  up  his  Hands  to  Heaven,  made  his 
prayers  in  this  manner. 

Lord  God  of  Heaven  and  Earth;  thou  hast  vouchsafed  of 
thy  Grace,  to  those  of  our  Order,  to  know  thy  Workes  of 
Creation,  and  the  Secretts  of  them;  And  to  discerne  (as  farre 
as  appertaineth  to  the  Generations  of  Men)  Between  Divine 
Miracles,  Workes  of  Nature,  Works  of  Art,  and  Impostures 
and  Illusions  of  all  sorts.  I  doe  here  acknowledge  and  testifie 
before  this  People,  that  the  Thing  which  we  now  see  before 
our  eyes,  is  thy  Finger,  and  a  true  Miracle.  And  for-as-much, 
as  we  learne  in  our  Bookes,  that  thou  never  workest  Miracles, 
but  to  a  Divine  and  Excellent  End,  (for  the  Lawes  of  Nature 
are  thine  owne  Lawes,  and  thou  exceedest  them  not  but  upon 


Bacon's  "New  Atlantis"  49 

great  cause)  wee  most  humbly  beseech  thee,  to  prosper  this 
great  Signe;  And  to  give  us  the  Interpretation  and  use  of  it  in 
Mercy;  Which  thou  docst  in  some  part  secretly  promise,  by 
sending  it  unto  us. 

When  he  had  made  his  Prayer,  hec  presently  found  the 
Boate  he  was  in,  moveable  and  unbound;  whereas  all  the  rest 
remained  still  fast;  And  taking  that  for  an  assurance  of  Leave 
to  approach,  he  caused  the  Boate  to  be  softly,  and  with  silence, 
rowed  towards  the  Pillar.  But  ere  he  came  neere  it,  the  Pillar 
and  Crosse  of  Light  brake  up,  and  cast  it  selfe  abroad,  as  it 
were,  into  a  Firmament  of  many  Starres;  which  also  vanished 
soone  after,  and  there  was  nothing  left  to  be  seen,  but  a  small 
Arke,  or  Chest  of  Cedar,  dry,  and  not  wett  at  all  with  water, 
though  it  swam.  And  in  the  Fore-end  of  it,  which  was  towards 
him,  grew  a  small  greenc  Branch  of  Palme;  And  when  the  wise 
Man  had  taken  it,  with  all  reverence,  into  his  Boate,  it  opened 
of  it  selfe,  and  there  were  found  in  it,  a  Booke,  and  a  Letter; 
Both  written  in  fine  Parchment,  and  wrapped  in  Sindons  of 
Linnen.  The  Booke  conteined  all  the  Canonicall  Bookes  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testament,  according  as  you  have  them;  (For 
we  know  well  what  the  Churches  with  you  receive) ;  And  the 
Apocalypse  it  selfe,  And  some  other  Bookes  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  were  not  at  that  time  written,  were  never- 
thelesse  in  the  Booke.  And  for  the  Letter,  it  was  in  these 
words. 

I  Bartholomew,  a  Servant  of  the  Highest,  and  Apostle  of 
Iesus  Christ,  was  warned  by  an  Angell,  that  appeared  to  me, 
in  a  vision  of  Glory,  that  I  should  commit  this  Arke  to  the 
flouds  of  the  Sea.  Therefore,  I  doe  testifie  and  declare,  unto 
that  People,  where  God  shall  ordaine  this  Arke  to  come  to 
Land,  that  in  the  same  day,  is  come  unto  them  Salvation  and 
Peace  and  Good  Will,  from  the  Father,  and  from  the  Lord 
Iesus. 


While  pondering  over  the  Governor's  story  in  which  is 
the  marvelous  disintegration  of  pillar  and  cross  our  atten- 
tion is  momentarily  called  to  a  study  of  charity  organiza- 


50  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

tions  and  Solamona's  House,  which  was  instituted  for  the 
finding  out  of  the  true  nature  of  all  things.  Profound 
amazement  is  aroused  at  Bacon's  great  scheme  for  "the 
enlarging  of  the  bounds  of  human  empire,  to  the  effect- 
ing of  all  things  possible, ' '  and  by  the  realization  that  he 
anticipates  nearly  all  of  the  modern  scientific  inventions 
such  as  the  submarine  vessel  and  the  aeroplane.  Sir 
Francis  Bacon  was  as  prophetic  in  the  New  Atlantis  as 
Lord  Lytton  in  The  Coming  Race  (1871) ;  and,  perhaps,  the 
most  noteworthy  thing  about  this  novel  is  that  it  is  the 
first  bit  of  fiction  in  which  religion  and  science  clasp  hands 
in  perfect  harmony  beneath  a  permanent  rainbow  that 
they  have  created  and  set  in  the  firmament  for  progressive 
humanity. 

Would  that  Bacon  had  completed  his  eloquent  fable; 
for,  if  he  had,  we  might  have  had  the  realization  of  Sir 
Thomas  More's  Utopian  dream  of  things!  On  Bacon's 
New  Atlantis  we  would  have  observed  the  turning  of  the 
wheels  of  a  code  of  laws  "of  the  best  state  or  mould  of 
commonwealth";  and,  as  it  is,  the  fragment  shows  that 
an  enlightened  people  were  working  under  what  must 
have  been  an  ideal  code  of  laws.  These  inhabitants  of 
Bacon's  island  hated  impostures  and  illusions  in  every 
department  of  knowledge  and  most  of  all  in  the  field  of 
education.  Profound  pity  for  the  results  of  unsound 
education  permeates  the  novel.  Bacon,  who  long  before 
at  the  University  of  Cambridge  had  felt  the  lack  of  room 
for  free  inquiry,  holds  out  practicable  methods  by  which 
the  inhabitants  of  his  isle  could  re-educate  themselves 
every  twelve  years  by  comparing  their  light  from  within 
with  the  light  that  was  without — which  was  the  light  of 
the  world's  educational  growth;  but  first  before  there 
could  be  any  cross-pollination  in  education  they  must 
seek  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  that  was  within.  By  this 
it  can  readily  be  seen  that  Bacon  is  looking  through  the 


Bacon's  "New  Atlantis"  51 

eyes  of  Ezekiel,  Plato,  and  More,  upon  a  state  safely 
placed  in  the  hands  of  the  righteous  few,  whose  wonderful 
scientific  achievements  had  come  about  by  reason  of  the 
constant  adjustment  and  re-adjustment  of  imported 
theories  and  methods  to  the  theories  and  methods  already 
in  vogue. 

In  this  novel  of  ideas  there  is  scarcely  any  characteri- 
zation; but  the  thumb-nail  sketch  of  the  merchant 
Joabin,  "the  good  Jew,"  in  vibratory  dialogue  projects 
a  well-rounded  figure.  On  the  other  hand,  the  delineation 
of  the  father  of  Solamona's  House  "sinks  i'  the  scale" 
because  of  the  detraction  caused  by  overdisplay  of  the 
trappings  and  suits,  which  were  given  this  officer  by  Bacon 
who  all  his  life  bent  his  knees  to  those  worshiping  in  the 
temple  of  Mammon.  Bacon  believed  in  putting  the 
aristocratic  few  who  knew  how  to  investigate  the  truths  of 
nature  in  dress-parade  costume.  In  this  respect  there  is  a 
cap-and-gown  anti-democratic  presentation  of  ideal  demo- 
cratic ideas.  More's  Utopian  children,  if  they  had  been 
permitted  to  look  at  these  Joseph-coated  dignitaries, 
strutting  through  the  streets  of  the  capital  of  New  At- 
lantis, would  have  cried  out  to  their  mothers,  "Look! 
Look !  are  not  these  tinseled  lubbers  of  Bensalem  the  wise 
men's  fools?"  The  New  Atlantis  was  intended  to  be  a 
reinterpretation  of  More's  Utopia — ideal  democracy  be- 
coming possible  only  through  the  efforts  of  an  educated, 
aristocratic  oligarchy.  Solamona's  House  is  anticipative 
of  Swift's  Academy  of  Royal  Projectors  in  A  Voyage  to 
Laputa  and  of  the  Bureaus  of  Public  Research  con- 
ducted by  municipal  universities  in  which  are  the  Samurai, 
"the  collective-minded  aristocracy,"  to  whom  H.  G. 
Wells  has  entrusted  all  the  scientific,  psychological 
apparati  by  which  the  whole  problem  of  artistic,  extra- 
governmental  socialism  in  all  its  aspects  may  find  a  happy 
solution. 


CHAPTER  II 
From  JoHn  Bunyan  to  Jonathan  Swift 

BETWEEN  Bacon's  purpose-novel  New  Atlantis 
(1627)  and  Bunyan's  realistic,  heroic  allegorical 
romance  Pilgrim' 's  Progress,  Part  I  (1678),  no 
classic  in  prose  fiction  was  created  by  the  novelists  who 
were  trying  to  mould  material  after  the  manner  of  Sidney, 
Greene,  Nash,  and  the  French  heroico-historical  romance 
writers.  Many  were  the  reversions  to  Sidney's  masterpiece 
such  as  Ford's  Ornatus  and  Artesia  (1607?),  Lady  Mary 
Wroth's  Urania  (1621)  and  Crowne's  Pandion  and  Am- 
phigeneia  (1665).  Richard  Head  and  Francis  Kirkman's 
The  English  Rogue  (1665-80)  appeared  in  four  volumes, 
reminiscent  in  the  fortunes  of  Meriton  Latroon  of  "the 
conny-catching "  pamphlets  of  Greene  and  The  Unfor- 
tnnate  Traveller;  or  the  Life  of  Jack  Wilton  of  Nash's. 
Over  in  France  in  1641,  Madeleine  de  Scudery  in  Ibrahim 
emphasized  imagination  as  a  means  to  force  belief  on  the 
reader  of  historical  romance.  In  1649,  appeared  her 
Clelie,  which  covers  ten  volumes  before  Aronce  can  marry 
the  heroine.  And  soon  over  in  England,  out  at  the  house 
of  Cardigan,  the  home  of  Catherine  Philips,  and  in  the 
country  home  of  the  Duchess  of  Newcastle,  a  coterie  of 
savants  gathered  together  to  analyze  aesthetically  the 
Scudery-Calprenede  heroico-historical  romances  in  which 
artful  imagination  had  tied  itself  to  the  lie  of  the  realism 
of  false  historical  data  or  manuscripts.    These  long-winded 

52 


Ingelo's  "Bentivolio"  53 

romances,  in  which  is  always  the  touch  of  a  Sidney, 
helped  to  fashion  the  mould  of  Boyle's  Parthenissa  (1664), 
Mackensie's  Arctina  (1661),  and  Crowne's  Partition  and 
Amphigcncia  (1665).  English  fiction  during  the  forty 
years  preceding  Bunyan  was  still  fond  of  adventuring  into 
Arcadia,  still  bent  on  encountering  perils  with  Amadis  for 
an  Oriana  and  on  taking  pleasurable  strolls  in  Troynouant 
with  Francesco  and  Infida,  or  of  supping  in  Florence  with 
Jack  Wilton  and  Diamante,  and  on  being  stupidly  happy 
in  braving  the  shadows  cast  by  the  French  heroico- 
historical  romances. 

In  1653  a  reaction  had  set  in  against  heroic  romances. 
Caricature  work,  however,  failed  to  deviate  the  heroic 
from  its  thorough-paced  path  of  the  tedious,  the  absurd, 
and  the  objectionable.  The  heroic  romance,  because  of 
the  hue  and  cry  against  it,  tried  to  better  itself  by  incor- 
porating religion  to  enliven  its  allegory  and  to  remove 
absurdities,  blood  and  thunder,  and  the  pornographic. 

Nathaniel  Ingelo's  Bentivolio  and  Urania,  in  two  parts 
of  four  and  two  books  (1660-64),  is  a  religio-heroic  allegori- 
cal romance  prophetic  in  some  respects  of  Bunyan 's 
Pilgrim's  Progress  with,  however,  the  many  missing  x's 
all  supplied  at  the  end  in  the  index.  Bentivolio  and  Urania, 
with  its  Theoprepia  (an  ideal  state  worthy  of  God)  to 
which  pilgrims,  retarded  by  the  temptations  of  this  life, 
are  journeying,  is  an  example  of  the  soldering  of  religion 
to  heroic  romance;  and,  though  the  novel  is  poor,  Ingelo's 
experiment  charged  the  air  with  the  current  that  electrified 
Bunyan  to  succeed  in  the  field  wherein  a  good  clergyman 
had  failed.  In  Ingelo's  heroic  allegory  with  Bentivolio 
we  are  happy  to  escape  from  Lady  Inganna  (Fraud)  and 
the  vile  country  of  Argentora ;  with  Urania  and  Panaretus 
we  walk  with  fear  in  the  court  and  grounds  of  Hedonia, 
Queen  of  Piacenza;  and  with  Urania  we  flee  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Vanasembla,  where  beautiful  speculations  prevail 


54  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  logomachists  ape  the  Theoprepians,  and  are  terrified 
by  the  net  of  evils  cast  over  us  by  Theriagene's  natives 
and  the  usurper  Antitheus  living  in  Polistherium  (the  city 
of  beasts).  Glad,  indeed,  are  we  to  end  this  pilgrimage  of 
human  life  in  Theoprepia,  and  there  is  rejoicing  as  its 
Prince  Theosebes  blesses  the  marriage  of  Bentivolio  and 
Agape  (Love)  and  permits  us,  if  it  is  desired,  to  reside  in 
the  house  of  Phronesia  (Prudence),  who  once  had  en- 
countered all  kinds  of  dangers  in  the  land  of  Argentora. 

For  the  most  part  the  pages  of  Bentivolio  and  Urania 
are  filled  with  allegory  that  is  banal,  but  twice  in  the 
flotsam  and  jetsam,  we  find  jewels  which  have  been  cut 
into  shape,  and  it  might  have  been  possible  that  Bunyan 
picked  up  one  of  these  allegorical  gems  with  which  to  add 
luster  to  the  presentation  of  Christian  and  Pliable,  es- 
pecially Pliable,  in  the  Slough  of  Despond.  If  Bunyan 
glimpsed  at  Borborites  as  he  was  traveling  toward  Theo- 
prepia and  saw  him  in  the  foul  mire  of  the  lake  to  which 
Hyla  the  serpent  had  lured  him,  and  observed  him  after- 
wards dropping  wet  with  water  and  mud,  he  might  have 
kept  the  scene  as  a  piece  of  workmanship  to  be  used  in  the 
construction  of  the  initial  episode  in  part  first  of  Pilgrim's 
Progress  (1678). 

These  courteous  people  conducted  the  Travailers  to  the  House 
of  their  chief  Governour,  whom  they  call'd  Gnothisauton : 
His  seat  and  garb  was  such  as  became  the  Prince  of  Humility. 

He  was  at  that  time  discoursing  with  two  Young  men,  who 
travailing  towards  Theoprepia,  had  lost  their  way ;  one  of  them 
aiming  at  the  higher  part  of  the  Country,  had  made  more 
haste  then  good  speed,  and  the  other  neglecting  his  directions 
miscarried  fouly.  Both  of  them  having  wandred  a  good  while, 
for  fear  of  perpetual  erring,  were  come  to  be  better  inform'd 
by  Gnothisauton. 

One  was  call'd  Megalophron,  who,  as  he  came  from  Vana- 
sembla,  finding  the  way  dirty  which  led  towards  Borborus, 


Ingelo's  "Bcntivolio"  55 

inclin'd  so  much  to  the  other  hand  that  he  went  up  to  the 
Top  of  Hypsocardes,  never  making  question  but  that  the 
noble  Theoprepia  lay  beyond  the  rais'd  Height  of  those  lofty 
Hills:  .  .  . 

As  Gnothisauton  was  about  to  perfect  his  advises,  he  was 
fore'd  to  break  off  his  talk  in  meer  pity  to  Borborites,  for  that 
was  the  other  wanderers  name;  and  seeing  him  dropping  wet 
with  water  and  mud,  he  ask'd  him  how  he  came  in  that  sad 
case.  I  was  travailing,  quoth  Borborites,  towards  Theoprepia, 
and  kept  my  way  till  I  met  a  Serpent,  call'd  Hyla,  in  the  Road; 
and  I  was  so  taken  with  the  beauty  of  her  Skin,  the  comeliness 
of  her  Shape,  and  those  various  forms  into  which  she  would 
wind  her  self,  that  I  went  very  near  unto  her;  though  I  had 
good  reason  to  have  taken  better  heed,  since  I  saw  that  she  did 
eate  dust,  and  went  upon  her  belly.  She  taking  the  advantage 
of  my  heedlesness,  twin'd  her  self  about  one  of  my  leggs,  and 
then  hiss'd  and  pointed  with  her  head  which  way  she  would 
have  me  go,  and  for  my  life,  I  thought,  I  could  go  no  other. 
In  a  while  I  was  come  to  the  borders  of  the  muddy  Lake ;  and 
though  I  saw  my  danger,  I  could  not  but  step  into  the  edges 
of  it.  But  when  I  found  my  self  ready  to  sink  into  the  foul 
mire,  I  began  to  think  that  it  was  very  probable,  if  I  should 
go  a  little  further,  I  should  never  come  back;  and  thereupon 
I  resolv'd  to  return:  but  finding  my  self  disabled  so  long  as  the 
Serpent  inclasp'd  my  leg,  I  laid  hold  of  my  sword;  and  the 
wily  Snake  suspecting  to  what  end  I  would  draw  it,  unloos'd 
her  self,  and  crept  away  with  as  much  haste  as  I  could  desire. 
I  rejoye'd  at  the  flight  of  my  enemy,  but  pursued  her  no  further, 
not  knowing  but  the  false  guide  might  yet  serve  me  some 
treacherous  trick,  and  repeated  my  way  back  with  a  speedy 
pace;  which  having  continued  some  houres,  I  arrived  here, 
though  in  such  an  unhandsome  manner,  that  I  am  heartily 
asham'd  of  my  self. 

One  other  scene  stands  out  in  the  novel,  and  that  is  the 
naval  engagement  in  Book  Six.  Ingelo's  head  must  have 
been  enveloped  in  a  halo  of  allegorical  fire  as  he  made 


56  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

spirited  action  sustain  the  splendid  attack  of  the  Theo- 
prepians  upon  Hipponyx,  the  principal  haven  of  Theriagene, 
the  capital  of  which  was  Polistherium  (city  of  beasts). 
One  should  pause  to  observe  it,  for  in  this  scene  is  the 
working  of  the  machinery  of  religio-heroico,  allegorical 
narrative  fourteen  years  before  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's 
Progress  and  eighteen  before  The  Holy  War.  The  great 
fleet  of  the  Theoprepians  under  the  commandership  of 
such  heroes  as  Alethion,  Aristander,  Amyntor,  and 
Bentivolio,  came  sailing  into  the  harbor  and  at  once  laid 
siege  to  the  forts,  built  upon  each  side  of  the  port,  which 
were  filled  with  the  best  soldiers  of  Antitheus  and  Atheo- 
philus.  While  the  forts  were  being  assailed,  the  great 
bridge,  composed  of  the  hulks  of  old  barks  fastened  to- 
gether with  chains,  which  the  Antitheans  had  stretched 
across  the  harbor  as  a  protection,  was  gradually  blown  to 
pieces  by  means  of  the  fireboats  and  hand-grenados. 
The  forts  had  now  been  taken  and  the  unchained  barges 
that  had  formed  the  bridge  were  driven  by  the  tide 
towards  Hipponyx,  so  that  smoking  firebrands  from  these 
burning  wrecks  were  flying  everywhere  in  the  air.  Then 
it  was  that  Atheophilus  advanced  with  his  fleet  from  the 
inner  harbor  past  the  forts  being  subjected  to  a  hot  fire 
from  his  own  guns  directed  by  the  victorious  Theopre- 
pians, and  at  half-flood  tide  the  two  fleets  came  together. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  engagement  a  chain-shot  from  the 
Theoprepian  admiral  cut  off  the  mainmast  of  the  admiral 
under  the  command  of  Atheophilus.  In  retaliation  Atheo- 
philus tried  to  board  the  admiral  commanded  by  Alethion. 
The  two  admirals  came  together,  were  hooked,  and  the 
terrific  naval"  engagement  was  on.  Once  the  Theoprepians 
succeeded  in  boarding  the  admiral  on  which  was  Atheo- 
philus who  fiercely  repulsed  them,  driving  them  into  the 
sea  and  back  into  their  own  ship.  Atheophilus  now  suc- 
ceeded in  climbing  aboard  the  Theoprepian  admiral  and 


Initio's  "Bentivolio"  57 


•6 


there  followed  such  a  mincing  of  men  with  swords  and  a 
battering  of  them  with  muskets  that  blood  ran  out  of  the 
water-holes.  Then  ensued  a  hand-to-hand  fight  between 
Alethion  and  Atheophilus,  who  was  thrust  through  the 
heart  and  fell  dead  at  the  feet  of  his  soldiers.  Alethion, 
having  cleared  his  own  ship,  made  a  second  boarding 
upon  that  of  his  enemies  and  killed  and  threw  everyone  of 
the  Antitheans  into  the  sea.  And  then  we  watch  the  great 
boat  which  had  been  commanded  by  Atheophilus  go  down. 
Whilst  this  tragedy  was  acting,  the  other  ships  of  the 
Theoprepians  annihilated  the  entire  Antithean  fleet. 
It  is  a  splendid  description  of  a  sea  fight.  We  see  ships 
sinking  by  reason  of  "incurable  leaks,  some  blowing  up 
their  decks  voluntarily,  and  some  being  fired  against  their 
wills.  The  air  was  filled  with  the  noise  of  guns,  cries  of 
dying  persons,  and  the  shouts  of  conquerors;  the  light  of 
the  day  being  obscured  with  clouds  of  smoke,  and  the  sea 
discolored  with  the  blood  of  wounded  men,  and  made  dis- 
mal with  the  bodies  of  the  slain." 

The  description  of  Aristandcr's  taking  of  the  forts, 
which  were  under  the  command  of  Atheophilus,  shows 
how  goodness  militant  triumphs  as  when  in  Bunyan's 
Holy  War  (1682)  Mansoul,  under  the  commandership  of 
Emmanuel,  held  out  thrice  against  the  attacks  of  Diabo- 
lus.  The  accurate  knowledge  of  sea  fighting  displayed  by 
Ingelo  in  the  description  of  the  naval  conflict  would  have 
pleased  Defoe,  Smollett,  Michael  Scott,  and  even  Cooper. 
The  two  men-of-war  hooked  together  in  the  harbor  of 
Hipponyx  carry  us  on  to  where  the  English  man-of-war 
Aurora  overcomes  the  Russian  frigate  in  precisely  the 
same  manner  in  Marryat's  Midshipman  Easy  ( 1 836) .  And 
then,  too,  the  whole  sea-fight  fingers  forward  to  William 
De  Morgan's  An  Affair  of  Dishonor  (1910),  in  which 
through  a  telescope  held  to  the  eyes  of  Sir  Oliver  Raydon 
are  seen  English  men-of-war  demolishing  the  fleet  of  the 


58  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Dutch  in  1665  in  the  days  of  Charles  II  and  Nathaniel 
Ingelo. 

Whether  or  not  the  Bible,  Concordance,  and  Foxe's  Book 
of  Martyrs,  were  the  only  books  that  Bunyan  used  in 
composing  his  Pilgrim 's  Progress  we  will  never  know,  but 
this  we  do  know  that  the  age  in  which  Bunyan  lived  had 
already  produced  Ingelo's  Bentivolio  and  Urania  (1660)  in 
which  everyone  desirous  of  respiritualization  of  character 
is  traveling  toward  Theoprepia.  It  seems  to  me  that  what 
Ingelo  breathed  in  little  from  the  religious,  allegorical 
atmosphere  of  the  time  Bunyan  blew  out  large  in  Pil- 
grim's Progress,  First  Part  (1678),  The  Holy  War  (1682), 
and  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Second  Part  (1684).  By  these 
productions  Bunyan  set  a  great  puritanic  boulder  in  the 
path  of  the  great  hybrid  monster  of  fiction  which  fed  on 
blood  and  thunder,  the  indecent,  and  the  absurd  and 
improbable.  English  fiction  did  not  adopt  the  abstrac- 
tions of  Bunyan's  fiction,  but  it  did  adopt  the  real  life  of 
this  world  in  which  his  allegorical  figures  walk.  Christian, 
beset  by  Apollyon  and  innumerable  Jack  Wiltons,  is  after 
all  an  abstraction  that  can  be  called  a  personality,  because 
he  is  every  man  on  the  road  of  life  who  wants  to  pass  over 
it  to  an  honorable  death.  Thus  Bunyan  helped  to  make 
subsequent  English  fiction  truer  in  its  romanticism  and 
more  serious  in  its  realism.  No  blood  and  thunder,  no 
indecency,  and  no  absurdities  or  improbabilities,  are  in  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress. 

Bunyan,  however,  made  some  slight  excursions  into 
the  field  of  the  picaresque  as  in  the  autobiographical  parts 
of  Grace  Abounding  (1666)  that  reveal  him  as  chief  of 
sinners  in  a  regrettable  past ;  and  in  the  Life  and  Death  of 
Mr.  Badman  (1680)  which  is  a  bridge  over  which  a  sort  of 
Nash's  Jack  Wilton  walks  to  shake  hands  with  Fielding's 
Jonathan  Wild.  In  the  form  of  a  dialogue  carried  on 
between  neighbor  Wiseman  and  Mr.  Attentive,  the  lying, 


Bunyan's  "Life  of  Mr.  Badman"         59 

stealing,  Sabbath-breaking,  swearing  Mr.  Badman,  who 
had  just  been  buried,  seems  to  be  living  his  life  over 
again,  so  vivid  is  the  analytic  review  of  his  past  as  it  falls 
from  their  lips.  When  Mr.  Badman  was  a  boy  his  father 
had  put  before  him  good  books  and  good  associates,  but 
the  youth  had  assiduously  read  "beastly  romances"  and 
"books  full  of  ribaldry"  and  had  chosen  for  companions 
the  swashbucklers  of  the  period.  On  reaching  manhood 
he  looks  about  for  a  wife  and  will  have  none  other  than  an 
heiress.  The  moneyed  woman  he  selects  happens  to  be 
extremely  religious,  therefore  to  win  her  he  conducts  a 
hypocritical  courtship  by  temporarily  putting  on  religion. 
After  leading  her  to  the  altar  he  quickly  doffs  religion  and 
finds  pleasure  only  in  taverns  and  brothels.  In  his  house 
there  is  presented  the  constant  struggle  between  the 
atheistical  man  of  the  world  and  the  woman  of  God  and 
the  home.  His  wife  fights  for  her  soul,  loving  religion 
more  than  her  husband;  but  she  does  not  desert  him  as 
Matthew  Arnold's  Margaret  deserted  her  merman  and 
mer-children.  This  woman  clings  to  her  husband  because 
of  her  seven  children  even  though  three  of  them  are 
thoroughly  bad  and  four  are  mongrels.  Her  husband 
goes  on  feathering  his  nest  with  other  men's  goods  and 
money,  availing  himself  of  bankruptcy  proceedings  in 
order  to  cheat  his  creditors.  This  master  cheat  who  could 
even  cheat  his  wife  felt  false  remorse  once  or  twice  in  his 
life.  On  one  occasion  after  having  broken  a  leg,  and  on 
another  occasion  when  he  was  sick  and  expecting  death, 
he  sought  the  consolation  of  false  conversion.  When  he 
had  been  thrown  from  a  horse  with  the  fear  of  death 
upon  him  he  had  cried  out,  "Lord  help  me!  Lord  have 
mercy  upon  me !  Good  God  deliver  me. "  It  is  the  picture 
of  a  man  whose  conscience  was  choked  before  his  leg  was 
healed.  He  had  lain  crying  out  all  night  for  fear,  "lam 
undone.     I  am  undone.     My  vile  life  has  undone  me." 


60  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

The  bed  had  shaken  under  him  as  thoughts  of  eternal 
judgment  racked  his  conscience.  He  called  to  his  wife 
addressing  her  as  "duck  and  dear,"  coming  to  believe 
that  he  had  an  honest,  godly  wife,  who  at  last  had  the 
best  of  him.  He  had  said  that,  if  God  would  let  him 
recover  this  once,  he  would  be  a  penitent  man  towards 
God  and  a  loving  husband  to  his  wife.  These  insincere 
utterances  of  Mr.  Badman  are  precursors  of  those  of  his 
feminine  counterpart  Defoe's  Moll  Flanders,  when  she  is 
under  sentence  of  death  in  Newgate.  Mr.  Badman,  with 
the  memory  of  the  affecting  death  of  his  wife  and  with  her 
dying  admonishments  to  the  children  still  ringing  in  his 
ears,  went  forth  to  choose  a  harlot  for  a  second  wife ;  and 
soon,  with  the  seeds  of  consumption  in  him,  he  rotted 
above  ground  before  his  flesh  could  stink  in  it.  Bunyan 
brings  out  the  fact  that  this  proud,  envious,  wrathful  man 
died  "like  a  lamb  " ;  but  the  tinker  of  Bedford  at  the  same 
time  Calvinistically  suggests  that,  though  Mr.  Badman's 
faculties  were  so  clouded  at  the  time  of  his  exit  as  to  have 
made  him  die  like  a  lamb,  yet  inwardly  this  tiger-man's 
soul  must  have  quaked  as  it  contemplated  its  entrance 
into  a  red-hot  cage,  the  door  of  which  was  to  be  clicked 
to  by  Apollyon. 

The  Life  and  Death  of  Mr.  Badman  seems  to  have  been 
inspired  by  the  same  motives  as  prompted  Thackeray  to 
write  Catherine  (1839-40)  to  support  a  hypothesis  that 
true  wickedness  should  gain  no  sympathy  since  it  has  no 
heroic  quality  or  ideality.  Bunyan  long  before  Thackeray 
wished  to  check  the  appetite  on  the  part  of  the  public  for 
fiction  deifying  heroic  criminals  and  commented  on  the 
bad  children  resulting  from  the  mismating  of  a  good 
woman  with  a  bad  man.  Defoe's  Moll  Flanders  is  a 
criminal  by  the  law  of  heredity,  and  Thackeray's  Tom,  the 
condensed  continuation  of  the  combined  wickedness  of 
both  parents  Catherine  and  the  Count,  salutes  Thomas 


Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  61 

Hardy's  criminal  child  Little  Father  Time  who,  in  Judc 
the  Obscure,  to  relieve  the  tragedy  of  his  poverty-stricken 
father  and  mother,  hangs  the  two  children  and  himself, 
leaving  behind  the  placard  on  which  is  written  "Done 
because  we  are  too  menny.  "  Thus,  in  The  Life  and  Death 
of  Mr.  B adman,  an  ethical  supplement  to  the  First  Part 
of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Bunyan  anticipates  many  points 
emphasized  by  the  modern  school  of  realism. 

The  Second  Part  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  (1684)  while 
it  has  not  the  bold  originality  or  virility  of  the  First  Part 
possesses  a  softer,  tenderer  tone.  There  is  a  divinity  not 
of  this  world  that  doth  hedge  Part  First  making  it  invul- 
nerable to  attack ;  but  there  is  a  humanizing  element  in  the 
Second  Part  that  makes  it  dearer  than  cold  divinity  to  the 
reader.  Life  presents  few  pleasures  in  Part  First;  but  in 
the  Second  Part  there  are  "the  wild  joys  of  living"  even 
in  this  harsh  world.  Rough  Bunyan  was  tender  enough 
not  to  compel  a  woman,  Christiana,  with  her  four  boys, 
in  the  wilderness  of  life  to  encounter  such  terrific  perils 
as  had  assailed  her  husband.  For  the  sake  of  her  and  the 
children  Bunyan  all  along  the  old  line  of  march  re-arranged 
the  bits  of  scenery  so  that  their  effects  tended  to  give 
cheer  and  comfort.  Why  is  it  that  to-day  a  mother  will 
invariably  place  Part  Second  in  the  hands  of  her  eight- 
year  old  children?  It  is  because  Bunyan  appreciated  the 
beauty  of  a  maternity  that  knew  how  to  bring  up  Cal- 
vinistic  children  who  would  be  human,  not  little  immacu- 
late gods  such  as  Mark  Twain  always  had  die  young. 
Matthew  suffers  from  stomachache  by  eating  too  many 
green  plums  plucked  from  the  devil's  garden.  Samuel, 
next  in  age  to  Matthew,  wants  to  know  the  whereabouts 
of  the  battlefield  where  his  father  had  fought  with  Apoll- 
yon  and  is  precocious  enough  to  promote  the  marriage 
of  his  brother  Matthew  to  Mercy.  Joseph  comes  next 
who  is  invulnerable  to  any  attacks  made  upon  his  cate- 


62  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


i>J 


chism  which  he  has  thoroughly  mastered.  And  last  of 
all  comes  James,  the  youngest,  who  is  sick  with  fear  in  the 
Valley  of  the  Shadow.  These  sanctified,  humanized  boys 
pass  through  all  experiences  such  as  seldom  sager  men 
experience  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave;  they  are  on  the 
qui  vive  for  every  new  emergency  in  the  race  of  life  and 
keep  us  alive  to  each  new  experience  with  evil  which 
comes  early  in  life.  They  sometimes  suffered  greatly,  but 
most  of  the  time  they  enjoyed  greatly,  believing  in  looking 
around  for  much  to  pick  up  by  which  to  make  Calvinistic 
life  pleasurable.  They  were  optimists  all  along  the  way. 
Thus  they  plead  well  for  a  special  form  of  creed  by  which 
to  find  salvation.  Their  early  tears  are  all  dried  from  their 
eyes  as  they  march  to  nuptial  joys  in  the  town  of  Vanity 
Fair:  for  here  Matthew  is  married  to  Mercy;  Samuel,  to 
Grace;  Joseph,  to  Martha;  and  James,  to  Phcebe.  These 
boys  and  girls  are  left  immortal  in  this  life  on  Bunyan's 
page.  They  are  left  on  this  side  of  the  River  of  Death, 
not  because  they  have  not  had  enough  experience  with 
life,  but  because,  I  think,  Bunyan  hated  to  deprive  them 
of  the  best  joys  that  earth  can  give.  Forever  will  these 
youthful  husbands  love  and  forever  will  their  young  wives 
be  fair.  Later  in  English  fiction,  when  we  come  to  Field- 
ing, Godwin,  Mrs.  Trollope,  Disraeli,  Dickens,  and  De 
Morgan,  we  will  meet  boys  who  at  the  beginning  of  the 
race  of  life  were  not  so  fortunate  or  so  well  provided  with 
guardians. 

The  play  of  religion  upon  the  heroic  moved  English 
fiction  to  turn  into  a  larger,  saner  path  leading  to  that 
stile  on  the  steps  of  which  Defoe  and  Swift  stood  to  view 
the  promised  land,  into  which  Richardson  and  Fielding 
shortly  were  to  enter. 

In  English  fiction  this  moral  quality  of  John  Bunyan's 
is  so  strong  that  I  think  it  had  its  effect  even  on  Mrs. 
Aphra  Behn  who,  ten  years  after  the  publication  of  the 


Mrs.  Bchn's  "Oroonoko"  63 

Pilgrim's  Progress,  portrayed  a  black  heathen  prince 
surrounded  in  Surinam  by  such  white  villains  as  Newgate 
never  transported.  It  is  surprising,  indeed,  to  see  Mrs. 
Behn  taking  any  delight  in  unfolding  an  ethical  charac- 
terization; for  in  all  her  other  pieces  of  fiction  she  lays 
great  emphasis  on  the  unethical.  Oroonoko,  as  the  Royal 
Slave,  at  all  times  refused  to  be  whitewashed  by  an  Euro- 
pean code  of  laws,  since  he  believed  his  own  to  be  better. 
Oroonoko's  ethics,  anticipatory  of  that  of  Defoe's  man 
Friday,  does  not  make  him  take  much  stock  in  a  white 
man's  god,  whose  worshipers  continually  make  pledges 
and  oaths  that  they  never  keep.  Mrs.  Behn  was  thor- 
oughly original  in  creating  such  a  Prince  of  the  Amadis 
type  and  especially  when  she  colored  him  black  and  added 
to  the  sheen  of  jet  the  colors  of  a  tropical  landscape  to 
make  more  pathetic  the  great  scene  in  which  Oroonoko, 
after  sacrificing  his  wife,  the  brave,  the  beautiful,  and  the 
constant  Imoinda,  buries  her  under  the  coverlid  of  Na- 
ture's leaves  and  flowers.  The  whole  novel  makes  us 
blush  at  the  conduct  of  the  social  savages  who  took  great 
pleasure  in  slowly  chopping  to  pieces  such  a  divine, 
natural  savage.  But  had  he  always  been  such  a  divine 
savage?  In  Coramantien  Oroonoko  had  been  depicted  as 
a  hero  in  love  and  war,  but  it  is  as  a  hero  of  the  harem. 
One  third  of  the  story  of  his  adventures  centres  around 
the  Otan  (harem)  with  its  frequenters  such  as  Aboan  and 
Onahal  who  helped  Oroonoko  and  Imoinda  to  their  nuptial 
joys  by  means  of  trickery  and  lies.  Prince  Oroonoko  sug- 
gested to  Imoinda  in  order  to  save  her  life  that  she  should 
tell  the  King  that  Oroonoko,  unknown  to  her,  had  broken 
into  her  apartments  and  had  ravished  her ;  and  Aboan  and 
Onahal  assured  him  of  "  a  lye  that  should  be  well  enough 
contrived  to  secure  Imoinda."  Oroonoko  should  have 
gladly  and  willingly  made  his  marriage  contract  with 
Imoinda  legal  by  gaining  the  consent  of  the  King,  his 


64  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

grandfather,  who  had  always  been  most  favorably  dis- 
posed to  all  his  plans.  Oroonoko  without  cause  ignored 
the  King  and  the  law  of  his  country.  In  Coramantien 
Oroonoko  and  Imoinda  had  been  susceptible  to  all  the 
intrigues  and  double  dealings  of  their  race;  and,  after 
being  transplanted  to  Surinam,  they  become  by  far  all  at 
once  too  angelic.  Oroonoko  has  been  given  a  sort  of 
unethical  coloring  in  character  caught  by  his  having  stood 
too  long  in  the  shadow  of  the  Otan ;  and  by  the  fact  that 
Mrs.  Behn  was  susceptible  to  the  liaison  life  in  the  London 
court  of  Charles  II  and  allowed  it  to  creep  into  the  Cora- 
mantien part  of  her  nouvelle;  therefore,  his  characteriza- 
tion as  an  Amadis  in  Surinam  is  somewhat  inconsistent 
as  it  conspicuously  shines  in  honorable  qualities  above 
those  found  in  any  of  the  white  men  on  the  plantations. 

The  descendants  of  this  Oroonoko  are  Defoe's  man 
Friday  of  17 19;  Shebbeare's  Indian  Canassatego  in  Lydia 
(1755);  the  Indians  living  near  Lake  Erie  who  rescue  a 
white  woman  whose  honor  is  threatened  by  a  white 
European  gentleman  of  quality  in  The  Fair  American 
(1767);  and  the  philosophic  Cherokee  chief  in  Macken- 
zie's Man  of  the  World  (1773)  who  would  have  Annesly 
believe  that  the  aborigines  were  far  better  than  the 
Europeans,  who  at  their  best  were  worse  than  the  worst 
of  the  Cherokees.  In  Thomas  Day's  Sandjord  and  Mer- 
ton  (1783-89)  "the  honest  Black"  who  saves  Tommy 
Merton's  life  in  the  bull-fight,  the  Indians  in  Mrs.  Len- 
nox's Euphemia  (1790),  the  Iroquois  named  Wolf-hunter 
in  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith's  Old  Manor  House  (1793), 
Caesar  on  the  Jamaican  plantation  in  Maria  Edgeworth's 
The  Grateful  Negro  (1802),  and  Mesty  the  negro  prince, 
an  authority  on  skulls  when  he  had  been  in  Ashantee, 
serving  as  simple  sailor  in  Marryat's  Mr.  Midshipman  Easy 
(1836),  possess  characteristics  of  Oroonoko;  and  some,  as 
the  last  two  mentioned,  are  replicas.    The  heroic  Oroonoko, 


Mrs.  Behn's  "The  Fair  Jilt"  65 

who  passed  on  his  stoicism  to  Cooper's  Chingachgook 
dying  true  to  the  faith  of  his  ancestors,  paraded  in  the 
uniform  of  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  in  Harriet  Martineau's 
The  Hour  and  the  Man  (1840)  and  walked  in  the  garb 
of  Uncle  Tom  in  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  masterpiece 
of  1852.  The  most  recent  replica  of  Oroonoko  has  been 
G.  W.  Cable's  Bras  Coupe  in  The  Grandissimes  (1880) 
who,  though  he  had  been  a  prince  in  Africa,  at  New 
Orleans  as  a  slave  is  beaten,  mutilated,  and  dies  knowing 
that  he  is  going  back  as  he  says  "to  Africa. " 

In  Oroonoko;  or,  the  Royal  Slave  (1688)  Mrs.  Behn,  even 
though  latest  research  shows  that  she  never  visited  the 
tropics,  or  met  a  Caesar  (Oroonoko)  on  a  Surinam  planta- 
tion, did  contribute  to  English  fiction  local  color  which 
depends  not  on  unicity  but  on  multiplicity  of  details 
described  such  as  orange  trees,  lemon  trees,  marmosets, 
armadillos,  parakeets,  and  electric  eels.  She  was  too 
small  an  artist,  however,  to  achieve  atmosphere.  She 
loiters  here  and  there  throughout  the  short  novel,  painting 
things  with  a  small  brush  but  with  a  fuller  brush  than 
that  which  was  used  by  Sir  Francis  Bacon  to  color  the 
clothes  of  the  dignitaries  on  the  island  of  New  Atlantis 
whereby  he  almost  but  not  quite  achieved  local  color. 

The  ingenious  Mrs.  Behn  in  Oroonoko  tells  us  that  she 
was  fond  of  telling  stories  of  nuns  to  "the  brave,  the 
beautiful,  and  the  constant  Imoinda";  therefore,  in  The 
Fair  Jilt  and  The  Lucky  Mistake  (1689)  there  is  no  surprise 
when  Mrs.  Behn  entertains  us  by  displaying  somewhat  of 
a  nunnery  outfit.  In  The  Fair  Jilt  Miranda  is  an  un- 
inclosed  nun,  tall,  admirably  shaped,  with  bright  hair, 
and  with  hazel  eyes  full  of  love  and  sweetness.  She  is 
eighteen  years  of  age  and  moves  dangerously  in  a  black 
dress  to  ruin  a  man  of  God  in  a  confessional  box.  Here  is 
the  duel  of  sex,  a  woman  of  the  world  versus  a  man  of  God. 
She  reminds  one  of  Matilda,  creeping  into  the  convent  to 


66  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

ruin  Ambrosio  in  Lewis's  The  Monk  (1795);  and  she 
appears  in  modern  form  as  Gloria  Quayle  ruining  John 
Storm  in  Hall  Caine's  The  Christian.  Having  tempor- 
arily ruined  the  man  of  quality  and  rectitude,  Miranda 
passes  on  to  the  conquest  of  Tarquin,  who  is  as  much 
like  Nash's  Jack  Wilton  as  Miranda  is  like  Nash's  Dia- 
mante. At  the  end  of  the  nouvelle,  however,  she  is  a 
penitent,  prefiguring  Defoe's  Moll  Flanders. 

In  The  Lucky  Mistake  at  Orleans  Rinaldo  first  sees  his 
sweetheart  the  thirteen-year-old  Atlante  at  the  Church 
of  Our  Lady  at  the  altar  just  as  Vincentio  di  Vivaldi  sees 
lovely  Ellena  di  Rosalba  in  the  Church  of  San  Lorenzo  at 
Naples  in  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  The  Italian  (1797).  Just 
as  Algernon  Lorraine  first  sees  Francisca  in  a  church  at 
Naples  in  Letitia  E.  Landon's  Romance  and  Reality  (1831), 
and  just  as  Angus  Dalrymple  at  Subiaco  is  entranced  by 
the  singing  of  the  beautiful  nun  Maria  Adolorata  in 
Marion  Crawford's  Casa  Braccio  (1894)  so  Rinaldo  meets 
his  fate  in  the  "dim  religious  light. "  In  The  Lucky  Mis- 
take Chariot,  fancying  that  she  loves  Rinaldo  and  being 
out  of  love  with  a  nunnery  life,  tries  to  trick  her  sister 
Atlante  by  slipping  out  of  the  convent  walls  to  enter 
Rinaldo's  coach  that  had  been  driven  up  in  order  to  effect 
Atlante 's  escape.  This  thing  of  carrying  on  an  amour  at 
a  convent  carries  us  back  to  King  Arthur's  with  Angellica 
in  the  Elizabethan  pamphlet-romance,  Tom  a  Lincolne, 
the  Red  Rose  Knight;  and  the  bravoes  of  Count  Vernole 
who  interfere  at  the  convent  with  Rinaldo's  scheme  of 
carrying  off  Atlante  anticipate  the  banditti  in  Dr.  Moore's 
Zeluco  (1786)  and  the  condottieri  in  Lewis's  The  Monk. 
Thus  the  convent  and  the  coach  have  come  into  English 
fiction  to  stay.  Samuel  Richardson  in  1740  has  Pamela 
carried  in  a  coach  to  Mr.  B's  estate  and  Harriet  Byron 
carried  off  in  one  by  the  villain  Pollexfen  in  Sir  Charles 
Grandison  (1753).    Another  minor  matter  to  be  noted  in 


Congreve's  "Incognita"  67 

Mrs.  Bchn's  fiction  is  that  in  The  Fair  Jilt  there  is  the 
inset  story  of  Prince  Henrick  which  is  nothing  technically 
new,  since  an  example  of  such  greets  us  on  the  pages  of 
Tom  a  Lincolnc,  the  Red  Rose  Knight.  The  inset  story  is 
mentioned  simply  to  prepare  the  reader  for  what  in  ex- 
tenso  will  be  done  with  it  in  the  shape  of  "The  Man  of 
the  Hill"  by  Fielding  in  Tom  Jones  (1749). 

Three  years  after  the  death  of  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  the 
gay  young  William  Congreve  produced  his  first  and  only 
novel,  Incognita:  or  Love  and  Duty  Reconciled  (1692).  The 
most  dramatic  part  of  his  realistic  romance  is  where  the 
beautiful  Incognita,  disguised  in  man's  apparel,  at  night 
among  the  ruins  of  an  old  monastery,  is  unexpectedly 
found  and  rescued  by  Aurelian  after  he  has  first  pistoled  a 
man  who,  he  later  learns,  would  have  been  her  ravisher. 
The  romance  is  brilliantly  dramatic  showing  most  em- 
phatically why  Congreve  abandoned  the  novel  for  the 
drama,  in  which  any  such  happily  devised  and  strikingly 
humorous  plot  full  of  Spanish  and  Italian  disguise  and 
intrigue  could  be  given  fuller  scope.  The  many  issues  of 
Incognita  during  Congreve's  lifetime  show  how  popular  it 
was.  Its  puzzling  plot  still  appeals  to  the  reader  of  to-day 
who  likes  to  be  thrilled  by  a  series  of  unexpected  situa- 
tions even  though  these  may  at  times  almost  verge  on  the 
impossible.  Some  of  us  ere  long  may  see  it  having  a  great 
run  as  a  photoplay. 

Aurelian,  the  only  son  of  Don  Fabio,  a  gentleman  of 
Florence,  had  been  educated  at  Siena  where  he  had  formed 
a  strong  friendship  with  a  young  man  by  the  name  of 
Hippolito  whose  home  was  in  Toledo,  Spain.  After 
Aurelian  had  left  Siena,  Hippolito  had  accompanied  him 
to  Florence;  and,  it  was  here  at  a  masked  ball  at  court 
that  Aurelian  met  the  beautiful  Incognita.  Hippolito 
was  also  at  the  fete  and  met  Leonora  who  made  the  mis- 
take of  taking  him  for  her  cousin,  Don  Lorenzo.    By  listen- 


68  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

ing  to  Leonora's  conversation  with  Hippolito  we  learn 
that  Don  Fabio  to  patch  up  a  quarrel  had  decreed  that 
Aurelian  should  marry  Juliana,  the  daughter  of  the  Mar- 
quis of  Viterbo.  After  the  ball  was  over,  Aurelian  when 
asked  by  the  Incognita  for  his  name  replied  that  it  was 
Hippolito  and  temporarily  removed  his  mask,  whereupon 
she  removed  hers.  Her  beautiful  face  threw  him  into  a 
thousand  ecstasies  so  that  a  declaration  of  love  at  once 
issued  from  his  lips.  That  night  upon  returning  home  the 
two  gallants  in  talking  over  the  experiences  of  the  evening 
confessed  their  love  for  the  two  girls.  Aurelian  advised 
Hippolito  to  write  a  letter  to  Leonora  and  to  sign  his 
name  as  Aurelian.  Deceived  by  the  letter,  Leonora  now 
fell  in  love  with  her  supposed  Aurelian  whose  face  she 
had  never  seen.  Shortly  after  this  the  two  heroes  tilted 
in  the  lists  and  amid  a  plume  of  feathers  on  Hippolito's 
helmet  could  be  seen  fluttering  Leonora's  handkerchief. 
Don  Fabio,  who  was  present  at  the  tournament,  at  once 
surmised  that  they  were  his  son  and  friend.  Later,  Don 
Fabio  ordered  that  a  search  should  be  made  for  Aurelian 
so  that  he  could  carry  out  his  purpose  of  having  Juliana 
married  to  him.  Leonora,  upon  hearing  the  report  about 
Juliana's  marriage  to  Aurelian,  now  loved  her  supposed 
Aurelian  all  the  more  wildly,  since  she  thought  she  might 
lose  him.  One  day  a  lady  entered  Aurelian's  chamber  and 
asked  Hippolito,  who  was  there  alone,  if  she  could  see 
Hippolito  on  business.  Hippolito  seeing  her  mistake 
excused  himself  to  go  out  and  find  Aurelian.  The  lady 
stayed  in  the  room  to  await  the  return  of  Hippolito,  and 
while  writing  a  letter  was  interrupted  by  the  entrance  of 
Don  Fabio  and  the  Marquis  of  Viterbo  from  whose 
presence  she  fled  in  a  coach  after  tearing  her  letter  to 
pieces.  Hippolito  came  back  without  Aurelian  and 
blinded  Don  Fabio  and  the  Marquis  of  Viterbo  as  to 
Aurelian's  whereabouts.     After  the  old  gentlemen  left 


Defoe's  "Robinson  Crusoe"  69 

the  apartment  Aurelian  came  and  discovered  the  torn 
letter  which  was  signed  with  the  name  "Incognita." 
Piecing  the  letter  together  he  ascertained  that  he  could 
affect  a  meeting  with  her  that  night  at  twelve  o'clock  at  a 
convent  gate,  but  alas !  the  name  of  the  convent  was  on  a 
missing  piece  of  paper.  That  he  was  successful  in  finding 
her  we  already  know;  and  this  Incognita  turns  out  to  be  the 
Juliana  whom  his  father  had  decreed  that  he  must  marry. 

Professor  H.  S.  Canby  has  this  to  say  of  the  novel: 
"It  is  a  replica  in  style  and  atmosphere  with  added  wit, 
if  lessened  vigor,  of  Cervantes 's  exemplary  novel  of  the 
two  students  of  Bologna  and  the  unfortunate  Cornelia." 
I  think  that  this  novel,  written  not  so  much  in  the  style 
of  the  heroic  drama  as  in  the  manner  of  the  Fletcherian 
plays,  puzzlingly  full  of  almost  impossible  deeds  of  heroes 
and  heroines,  goes  back  to  Mrs.  Behn's  The  Lucky  Mistake: 
a  New  Novel  (1689).  It  is  interesting  to  compare  and 
contrast  the  machinery  of  disguise  and  denoument 
employed  by  Mrs.  Behn  at  the  conclusion  of  her  nouvelle 
with  that  used  by  William  Congreve  in  the  middle  of  his 
nouvelle.  Congreve's  plot  structure  of  Incognita  is  a 
decided  advance  upon  that  of  Mrs.  Behn's  The  Lucky 
Mistake.  Incognita  is  certainly  Behnesque;  and,  in 
leaving  these  two  stories,  one  feels  that  Spanish,  French, 
and  Italian  intrigue  and  disguise  lie  back  of  the  fiction  of 
the  gay  Congreve  and  the  "divine  Astrea." 

It  is  somewhat  of  a  relief  to  see  the  novel  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  turn  away  from  these  realists  in 
love  with  romance  to  a  romanticist  in  love  with  realism 
who  often  on  his  sordid  characters  focused  an  ethical  light 
issuing  from  a  torch  that  he  had  snatched  from  the  hand 
of  John  Bunyan.  In  the  masterpiece,  of  17 19,  which 
Defoe  defines  as  historical  allegory,  Robinson  Crusoe, 
alone  and  beyond  the  pale  of  man's  law  on  the  island, 
never  forgets  that  he  is  responsible  to  the  God  above  and 


70  •  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

constantly  tries  to  convert  his  anthropomorphic  man 
Friday,  who  is  determined  that  he  will  have  nothing  to  do 
with  a  divinity  apparently  weaker  than  Apollyon.  Man 
Friday  says,  "If  God  much  strong,  much  might  as  the 
Devil,  why  God  no  kill  the  Devil,  so  make  him  no  more 
do  wicked?"  And  Crusoe  not  only  finds  out  that  he  can 
not  escape  his  own  conscience  but  ascertains  that  nowhere 
in  this  universe,  not  even  on  a  desert  island,  can  any  man 
escape  seeing  the  fearful  footprint  of  an  Apollyon  and 
meeting  his  Jack  Wilton-like  devotees  who  (in  Crusoe's 
case)  have  donned  the  disguise  of  cannibals.  Then  again 
Defoe  was  susceptible  to  the  biblical  when  in  The  Adven- 
tures of  Captain  Singleton  (1720)  he  makes  William  Walters, 
the  Pennsylvania  Quaker,  turned  pirate,  apply  sophistry 
as  a  salve  to  ease  the  conscience  of  Bob  Singleton  who, 
in  remorse  for  being  a  thief,  a  pirate,  and  a  murderer,  was 
about  to  shoot  himself.  William  the  Quaker  entered 
upon  a  long  and  serious  discourse  with  Bob  about  the 
nature  of  repentance,  counseling  that  he  should  confess 
to  God  his  crimes,  that  he  should  ask  His  pardon  and 
cast  himself  upon  His  mercy,  that  he  should  ever  hold 
before  him  the  thought  of  restitution  if  it  should  please 
God  to  put  that  in  his  power,  that  he  should  not  despair 
of  God's  mercy,  for  that  was  no  part  of  repentance,  but 
was  putting  oneself  in  the  condition  of  the  devil,  and 
finally  above  all  things  that  he  should  not  be  so  frightened 
in  his  dreams  at  the  devil  as  to  talk  out  loud  in  English 
lest  it  being  heard  by  others  might  cause  all  their  devil- 
tries to  be  divulged,  since  this  would  compel  a  certain 
Quaker  to  save  himself  at  once  by  shooting  such  a  good 
man  as  Bob. 

One  of  the  greatest  scenes  in  Defoe's  novels  is  permeated 
with  the  atmosphere  of  the  morality  of  Pilgrim's  Progress 
and  of  that  which  we  have  seen  marshaling  itself  into  form 
about  the  bed  of  Mr.  Badman  when  he  thought  he  was 


Defoe's   "Moll  Flanders"  71 

dying.  In  Moll  Flanders  (1722),  Moll  in  Newgate  re- 
pented heartily  of  all  her  past  life,  but  her  repentance 
yielded  her  no  satisfaction  because  she  analyzed  it  as 
repenting  after  the  power  of  further  sinning  had  been 
taken  away.  What  worried  her  was  not  that  her  crimes 
were  an  offense  against  God,  but  that  on  account  of  them 
she  was  to  be  punished;  and  thus  having  no  comfort  in 
repentance,  Newgate  hell  became  not  only  tolerable  but 
even  agreeable.  She  was  impudently  cheerful  and  merry 
in  her  misery  because  sadness  and  tears  held  out  no 
happiness  but  more  of  a  hell,  when  she  thought  of  God. 
Defoe  says,  "to  think  is  one  real  advance  from  hell  to 
heaven ' ' ;  and,  as  he  had  predestined  Moll  Flanders  for  a 
penitent  at  the  end  of  the  novel,  he  must  not  make  her  a 
piece  of  total  depravity,  not  even  in  Newgate.  When  she 
is  under  imminent  sentence  of  death  Defoe  cleverly  brings 
into  prison  one  who  is  to  be  hanged — whom  she  tearfully 
recognizes  as  one  of  her  former  husbands  who  had  turned 
highwayman  on  her  account.  This  causes  Moll  to  realize 
that  when  one  sins  one  does  not  only  hurt  oneself  but 
hurts  others  even  to  the  point  of  infinity.  And  very  soon 
we  find  her  in  the  night  lying  awake  saying  her  prayers, 
"Lord  have  mercy  upon  me.  Lord  what  will  become  of 
me?  Lord  what  shall  I  do?"  And  though  Moll  Flanders 
is  not  absolutely  repentant  yet,  by  watching  her  as  she 
instinctively  puts  on  the  garb  of  true  repentance  to  lace 
it  about  her  heart  as  tightly  as  a  corset,  we  are  gradually 
made  to  feel  that  it  is  facilitating  that  inward  amendment 
which  afterwards  thoroughly  rehabilitated  even  this  most 
hardened  criminal.  God  "rides  in  the  whirlwind  and 
directs  the  storm"  bursting  in  fury  upon  the  most  in- 
teresting characters  in  Defoe.  Dieu  le  veut  is  boomed  into 
the  ears  of  Moll  Flanders  and  Captain  Robert  Singleton 
in  order  that  they  may  understand,  as  well  as  the  reader, 
that  right  thinking  and  right  doing  are  usually  followed 


72  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

by  right  being,  and  that  there  is  nothing  so  despicable  in 
this  world  as  casuistry.  This  strong  moral  fibre  in  the 
fabric  of  the  fiction  of  Bunyan  twisted  itself  through  the 
pattern  of  Defoe's  novels  to  where  Thackeray  in  1846  re- 
established Bunyan's  Britain  Row  in  the  town  of  Vanity 
Fair  for  Becky  Sharp  at  No.  201  Curzon  Street,  May  Fair. 

Now  how  did  Moll  Flanders  become  one  of  the  horrid 
crew  of  Newgate  to  converse  with,  and  gaze  upon,  one  of 
her  own  sex  dancing  and  singing,  "  If  I  swing  by  the  string/ 
I  shall  hear  the  bell  ring"  at  St.  Sepulchre's  on  execution- 
day?  On  account  of  stealing  some  silk  brocade  from  a 
broker's  shop  she  had  been  sent  to  prison — that  Newgate 
which  in  some  shape  is  shadowed  in  the  fiction  of  Fielding, 
Smollett,  Goldsmith,  and  Henry  Brooke.  It  is  also 
present  in  the  pages  of  William  Godwin,  where  he  de- 
scribes the  horrors  of  the  prison  in  which  Caleb  Williams 
was  confined ;  and  it  erects  itself  in  that  Fleet  gaol  wherein 
Dickens's  Pickwick  sojourned  and  Thackeray's  Barry 
Lyndon  died.  And  when  Moll,  with  the  fear  of  death 
forcing  her  to  feign  penitence,  is  seen  in  Newgate,  we 
must  realize  that  she  is  there  because  she  was  born  the 
child  of  criminals.  Moll,  from  the  age  of  eighteen  to  sixty, 
committed  all  crimes  except  those  of  treason  and  murder. 
In  leaving  the  greatest  scene  constructed  by  Defoe,  we 
should  remember  that  he  thoroughly  advocated  that  the 
state  should  educate  the  children  of  criminals. 

In  the  dawn  of  life  little  Moll  had  wept  in  childish  fear 
at  the  thought  of  the  workhouse  ahead  of  her  on  the 
rough  road  of  life.  This  spectre  of  child-labor  that  terri- 
fied Moll  became  substance  to  little  Rurfigny  as  he  was 
compelled  to  work  in  agony  in  M.  Vaublanc's  silk-manu- 
factory at  Lyons;  and  little  Ruffigny's  sad  experience 
portrayed  by  Godwin  in  Fleetwood  (1805)  made  possible 
the  larger  pictures  of  the  sufferings  of  Charles  Dickens's 
poor  Oliver  Twist  and  Mrs.  Frances  Trollope's  Michael 


Defoe's  "Life  of  Colonel  Jack"  73 

Armstrong,  the  maltreated  factory  boy  of  1840.  And,  in 
speaking  of  unfortunate  children  and  in  recalling  how 
Defoe  framed  fiction  to  favor  reforms  in  the  social  system 
as  it  was  in  his  day,  we  must  not  forget  Colonel  Jack  in 
The  Life  of  Colonel  Jack  (1722).  This  little  illegitimate 
boy  from  his  birth  to  the  age  of  ten  was  brought  up  by  a 
nurse  who  had  not  only  taken  care  of  her  own  child  named 
Captain  Jack,  but  had  adopted  another  illegitimate  boy 
whom  she  called  Major  Jack.  At  her  death,  these  three 
boys  were  thrown  out  on  the  streets  of  London  to  live 
by  their  wits  and  sleep  in  ash-holes.  Captain  Jack  soon 
adopted  the  profession  of  a  child-snatcher,  and  Colonel 
Jack  under  the  Major's  instruction  became  an  artful 
pickpocket.  The  training  in  thievery  which  the  little 
Colonel  received  from  the  bigger  boy  Major  Jack  points 
to  the  poor  little  youngsters  who  were  taken  out  to  receive 
similar  instruction  at  the  hands  of  the  Artful  Dodger  of 
Fagin's  in  Dickens.  It  will  be  recalled  that  the  Artful 
Dodger  could  not  seduce  Oliver;  but  the  bigger  boy  in 
Defoe  easily  ruins  Colonel  Jack,  because  of  his  not  having 
the  Oliver  Twist  marrow  of  honesty  in  his  bones.  Later 
in  life,  however,  Colonel  Jack  becomes  a  penitent  and  is 
good  enough  to  forgive  and  marry  again  his  extravagant, 
divorced  wife  who  appears  before  him  as  one  of  his  slaves 
on  his  plantation  in  Virginia.  Thus  we  see  how  Defoe 
was  interested  in,  and  how  his  heart  went  out  to,  the 
ragamuffin,  the  child  without  a  chance,  living  in  squalor 
in  London  in  such  a  district  as  to  remind  us  of  Tom-All- 
Alone's  frequented  by  the  forlorn  figure  of  little  Jo  in 
Bleak  House. 

So  far  in  the  development  of  English  fiction  there  has 
been  much  of  the  pathetic  but  little  of  the  humorous. 
Occasionally  a  flickering  smile  came  as  when  we  noted 
the  reception  given  the  foreign  ambassadors  by  More's 
Utopian  children  and  the  treatment  given  the  purveyor  of 


74  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

drinks  by  Nash's  Jack  Wilton;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
from  More  to  Congreve,  who  in  Incognita  figured  out  a 
formula  of  humor  that  later  was  applied  to  his  comic 
situations  in  drama,  the  eye-strings  have  been  twitched 
by  the  serious  more  than  by  the  comic.  It  is  not  until  one 
reads  Defoe  that  one  feels  the  spontaneous  outburst  of 
genuine  humor.  In  The  Adventures  of  Captain  Singleton 
(1720)  we  chuckle  as  we  listen  to  William  Walters  the 
Quaker,  possibly  from  Philadelphia,  cleverly  using  his 
tongue  to  play  with  the  pirates  for  a  whole  skin  and  a 
safe  retreat.  Without  him  Singleton  never  could  have 
successfully  kept  the  Jolly  Roger  flying.  In  fact  the  crafty 
Quaker  emerges  as  the  leader  of  the  leader  of  the  pirates, 
a  delightful  figure  of  fun  in  hypocrisy.  And  in  The  Life  of 
Colonel  Jack  (1722)  we  fairly  roar  as  we  see  Colonel  Jack, 
whose  clothes  have  holes  for  pockets,  putting  his  money 
in  the  hole  in  the  tree  that  turns  out  to  be  hollow.  Pathos 
for  a  time  is  paramount  on  one  side  of  the  tree,  but  comedy 
soon  rampantly  reigns,  when  Defoe  takes  Jack  to  the 
other  side  of  the  tree  to  see  at  the  bottom  the  cavity 
wherein  lies  his  money.  The  reader  dances  to  the  happy 
fling  of  the  feet  and  arms  of  the  boy  who  has  recovered  his 
ill-gotten  treasure.  Tear-compelling  laughter  scenes  had 
occasionally  been  created  before  Defoe's  time,  but  from 
these  there  can  not  be  selected  any  just  like  this  light, 
tear-compelling  laughter  scene  in  which  moves  the  raga- 
muffin Colonel  Jack;  for  never  before  had  a  similar  com- 
posite scene  had  the  good  fortune  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
such  a  constructive  visualizer  as  Defoe.  Little  Colonel 
Jack's  dole  and  delight  are  real  and  will  survive  to  all 
ages,  because  tradesman  Defoe  chose  to  gain  verisimilitude 
by  using  a  vernacular  which  fell  from  the  lips  of  any 
ordinary  reader  of  fiction  at  that  time,  who  naturally 
could  and  would  appreciate  a  simple  collocation  of  words 
and  sentences  reflecting  his  own  limited  vocabulary. 


Swift's  "The  Battle  of  the  Books"       75 

To  conclude,  Defoe  can  be  satirical  in  his  pathos  as 
when  he  depicts  tears  in  the  eyes  of  Moll  and  Roxana; 
and  he  can  be  satirical  in  the  quality  of  humor  meted  out 
to  the  rapid  rise  of  Walters  the  Quaker,  turned  pirate. 
We  are  also  aware  of  this  satiric  strain,  when  along  with 
Jack  we  are  tickled  beyond  measure  at  the  recovery  of  the 
money  that  he  had  never  any  right  to  possess.  We  pass 
severe  judgment  on  Jack  up  to  the  time  he  lodges  the 
money  in  the  tree;  but  we,  from  the  moment  the  tree  is 
detected  as  being  hollow  to  its  base,  are  his  most  ardent 
friends  in  trying  to  help  him  recover  the  stolen  loot.  And 
it  is  this  striking  power  of  flinging  satirical  pathos  and 
satirical  humor  into  existence  that  connects  the  fiction  of 
Defoe  with  that  of  Jonathan  Swift. 

What  can  we  say  of  the  fiction  of  the  mad  parson  of 
Button's  whose  private  life  was  as  romantically  tragical 
as  that  which  occasionally  illumines  greatest  fiction  itself? 
What  can  we  say  about  the  fiction  of  him  who,  after  being 
graduated  by  special  favor  from  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
became  a  protege  of  Sir  William  Temple's  at  Sheen  and 
at  Moor  Park,  where  he  made  love  to  Esther  Johnson 
(Stella),  and  afterwards  went  to  London  to  dine  with  the 
Vanhomrighs  and  make  love  to  Vanessa  while  his  Stella 
was  in  Ireland,  and  later  in  life  rushed  furiously  to  Marley 
Abbey  to  confront  and  crush  Miss  Vanhomrigh  (Vanessa) 
with  that  black  frown  of  contemptuous  silence  and  an 
abrupt  departure? 

Jonathan  Swift  satirically  picked  his  way  into  English 
fiction  by  giving  us  The  Battle  of  the  Books  (1704)  in  which 
there  is  an  encounter  between  the  learned  ancients  and  the 
learned  moderns  on  the  plain  in  St.  James's  library.  The 
dialogue  of  the  spider  and  the  bee  and  the  noble  disserta- 
tion thereon  by  ^Esop  the  world  would  be  loth  to  lose. 
Swift,  in  believing  that  ancient  learning  surpassed  the 
modern,  shows  his  hatred  of  the  spider  that  could  spin  out 


76  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

of  its  poisonous  belly  a  mathematically  constructed  web 
of  sophistry  in  which  was  neither  honey  (sweetness)  nor 
wax  (light).  He  believed  for  the  time  being  in  love  so 
working  as  to  bring  forth  truth  with  its  element  of  higher 
seriousness,  which  was  woefully  lacking  in  any  modern 
masterpiece.  Swift  in  the  woods  of  pessimism  found  what 
afterwards  he  subjected  to  a  private  process  that  produced 
not  quasi-diluted  stuff  but  a  kind  of  strong  wild  honey 
which  was  flavored  by  his  own  barbaric  personality. 
Therefore,  we  like  his  satire  in  spite  of  the  taste  of  the 
formic  acid.  Swift  was  not  the  spider  but  the  bee  giving 
to  mankind  what  it  most  needs,  honey  and  wax:  "the  two 
noblest  of  things,  which  are  sweetness  and  light."  Swift 
in  The  Battle  of  the  Books  endeavored  to  show  eighteenth- 
century  authors  that  they  must  not  decapitate  the  higher 
hill  topping  Parnassus  which  obstructed  the  Moderns 
in  their  view  towards  the  East.  In  fiction  Swift  was 
determined  to  walk  serenely  on  the  top  of  this  hill  of  the 
classics,  which  derive  their  strength  from  the  Ancients, 
who,  like  the  mad  Dean,  never  lapsed  into  the  Gothic 
strain,  or  barbarity  of  pedantry,  to  show  that  they  knew 
the  world,  but  clung  to  that  style  (simplex  munditiis), 
which  is  never  to  be  obtained  for  a  language  that  sooner 
picks  up  affected  modes  of  speech  from  court,  city,  and 
theatre  than  from  the  classics  and  the  "unfashionable 
books  in  the  university."  The  Homeric  burlesque  style 
of  The  Battle  of  the  Books  is  in  the  manner  of  that  seized 
upon  by  Henry  Fielding  to  make  laughable  Parson  Adams's 
encounter  with  the  dogs  in  Joseph  Andrews  (1742),  and 
similar  to  that  used  by  Washington  Irving  to  make  vivid 
the  capture  of  Fort  Christina  in  Knickerbocker's  History  of 
New  York  (1809). 

In  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  (1704),  an  allegorical  romance  of  wit 
and  humor,  three  brothers,  Peter,  Martin,  and  Jack,  in 
medieval  times  came  up  to  town  each  one  hoping,  like 


Swift's  "A  Tale  of  a  Tub"  77 

Amadis,  to  find  an  Oriana;  but  soon  they  grew  into 
wicked  young  knights  and  their  Orianas  proved  to  be 
Duchess  d'Argent,  Madame  de  Grands  Titres,  and  Countess 
d ' Orgueil .  To  these  brothers  men  were  but  clothes  labeled 
with  names;  conscience  was  a  pair  of  breeches;  and  the 
soul  the  outward  dress.  These  knights,  Peter  (the  Church 
of  Rome),  Martin  (the  Church  of  England),  and  Jack 
(the  Dissenters),  were  fond  of  externalizing  their  coats, 
the  result  of  misinterpreting  and  disobeying  the  positive 
injunction  imposed  by  their  father's  will.  They  decorated 
their  coats  with  the  fopperies  of  their  respective  religions 
according  to  the  vain  shows  and  conceits  of  this  world. 
Peter  selling  pardons  to  Newgate  birds  became  rich,  but 
was  subject  to  fits  throwing  his  brothers  from  his  house. 
Martin  and  Jack  plucked  away  the  feathers,  fastened  to 
their  coats  by  Peter,  thus  trying  to  reduce  their  religions 
to  the  primitive  simplicity  of  Christianity.  Martin  is 
conservative,  phlegmatic,  sedate,  inclining  after  all  to 
much  of  the  decoration  which  Peter  had  put  on  his  coat. 
Thus  a  contrast  is  effected  between  him  and  his  two  out- 
rageously acting  brothers, — the  wrathful  Peter  and  the 
seolistic  Jack. 

Swift  believes  that  fiction  is  stronger  than  truth  and 
that  the  concrete  must  always  be  "conveyed  in  the 
vehicle  of  delusion."  One  third  of  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  is 
fiction  and  that,  too,  of  the  excellence  of  Bunyan's.  In  the 
Hints  for  an  Essay  on  Conversation  Swift  says:  "a  little 
grain  of  romance  is  no  ill  ingredient  to  preserve  and  exalt 
the  dignity  of  human  nature,  without  which  it  is  apt  to 
degenerate  into  everything  that  is  sordid,  vicious,  and 
low.  "  In  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  Swift  is  original  in  opening  new 
scenes  and  in  discovering  "a  vein  of  true  and  noble 
thinking,  which  never  entered  into  any  imagination 
before."  Unforgettable  are  the  faintly  individualized 
self-indulgent   Martin,    the   bullying,    drinking,    evicting 


78  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Lord  Peter,  and  the  martyrologic,  aeolistic,  ass-skulled 
Jack,  who  are  more  than  thumb-nail  sketches  or  ab- 
stractions. 

In  a  lighter  vein  of  graveyard  humor  have  The  " Bicker •- 
staff"  Papers  (1708)  been  composed.  There  are  few 
readers  whose  lungs  are  not  "tickle  o'  the  sere"  as  they 
on  the  night  of  the  twenty-eighth  of  March,  1708,  inhale 
the  atmosphere  in  the  ill-lighted  room  into  which  its 
owner  Partridge  (Hewson,  the  well-known  quack  and 
almanack-maker)  goes  to  engage  in  sprightly,  ghastly 
dialogue  with  the  obsequious,  dapper  man,  who,  as  a 
delegate  from  the  company  of  undertakers,  with  a  two- 
foot  rule  in  his  hands,  is  standing  on  a  table  measuring 
the  apartment  for  royal  mourning  cloth  which  was  to  be 
put  there  to  honor  Mr.  Partridge  whom  Swift  and  all 
London  had  determined  needs  must  be  ready  for  a  rich 
burial. 

By  writing  A  Tale  of  a  Tub  Swift  had  lost  the  favor  of 
Queen  Anne  so  far  as  being  advanced  to  suitable  office  in 
the  Church.  In  1714,  by  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  and 
the  consequent  downfall  of  the  Tory  party,  he  lost  all 
further  chance  for  court  favor  and  was  forced  to  be  content 
with  the  deanery  of  St.  Patrick's  which  for  a  year  he  had 
possessed.  As  the  years  sped  along  under  Hanoverian 
rule  with  no  political  preferment  in  sight  he  fell  back  for 
solace  on  the  strength  of  his  own  erroneous  statement  that 
"nice  men  are  those  that  have  nasty  ideas";  and  to  prove 
that  all  human  beings  are  nice  animals  with  nasty  ideas 
he  flung  from  the  press  Gulliver's  Travels  (1726).  On 
almost  every  page  of  this  political,  allegorical  novel  he 
jabs  his  pen  through  the  souls  of  all  his  species  and  be- 
spatters the  pates  of  Europeans  who  possess  the  "infernal 
habit  of  lying,  shuffling,  deceiving,  and  equivocating." 
Swift  holds  up  fancy's  show  box  so  that  one  beholds  therein 
the  miserable  intriguers  and  intrigantes  of  the  court  of 


Swift's  "Gulliver's  Travels"  79 

George  I.  By  observing  the  vices  of  the  Georgian  court- 
lings  placed  in  Lilliput  we  are  led  to  deduce  that  humanity 
in  general  is  polluted  by  the  vices  prevailing  among  the 
Lilliputians.  Just  as  we  are  recognizing  how  infinitesi- 
mally  small  humanity  is  all  at  once  we  behold  ourselves 
and  all  our  faults  magnified.  Lemuel  Gulliver,  walking  as 
a  Lilliputian  in  the  land  of  the  Brobdingnagians,  is  the 
embodiment  of  our  insignificant  selves  contemplating  with 
disgust  the  magnified  ulcers  on  our  body-politic. 

Dean  Swift,  like  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  hated  men  who  were 
in  speculation  and  so  "rapt  withal"  as  to  need  flappers: 
he  hated  men,  political  projectors  and  educators,  who 
imposed  chimeras  of  false  science  on  others  in  their 
academies.  Therefore,  he  carries  us  to  Laputa  to  gaze 
at  the  Flying  Island  and  laugh  at  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and 
the  scientific  men  of  the  Royal  Academy  and  at  all  those 
inventors  and  political  projectors,  who  seem  to  be  pos- 
sessed of  the  melancholy  of  the  mad  astronomer  in  Dr. 
Samuel  Johnson's  Rasselas.  On  the  island  of  Glubbdub- 
drib  the  intimate  conversation  that  Gulliver  has  with  the 
shades  of  the  great  dead  is  a  forecast  of  the  same  manner 
of  greeting  given  us  by  "the  dead,  but  sceptred  sover- 
eigns, who  still  rule  our  spirits  from  their  urns"  on  the 
pages  of  Fielding's  A  Journey  from  This  World  to  the 
Next  (1743).  Then  we  leave  the  foregoing  islands  to  go  to 
another  to  follow  Swift  to  his  last  sad  picture  of  the 
human  race.  On  the  canvas  is  seen  an  intellectualized 
animal  (Gulliver)  that  can  speak  like  a  Houyhnhnm. 
This  is  the  man  who,  on  further  examination,  is  regarded 
by  the  race  of  horses  as  being  even  worse  than  a  Yahoo. 
These  intelligent  horses  could  never  understand  why 
Gulliver  refused  to  claim  relationship  with  the  Yahoos 
since  he  was  continually  saying  ' '  the  thing  which  was  not ' ' ; 
and,  moreover,  they  were  convinced  he  was  a  living  lie, 
since  he  was  not  the  same  thing  when  he  slept  stripped 


80  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

as  when  he  was  awake  dressed.  On  this  island  there  is  a 
feeling  that  we  are  in  another  Utopia,  for  all  Houyhnhnms 
incited  no  one  to  vice ;  and,  on  leaving  this  land,  we  readily 
fall  in  with  Swift  to  one  conclusion  that  all  Yahoos  should 
be  exterminated  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  With  a  touch 
of  Shavianism  Swift  says,  "a  soldier  is  a  Yahoo  hired  to 
kill  in  cold  blood  as  many  of  his  own  species,  who  have 
never  offended  him,  as  possibly  he  can";  thus,  like  Ber- 
nard Shaw,  he  avers  that  brass  buttons  shine  better  when 
cut  off.  Then,  too,  he  softly  rings  the  tocsin  loudly 
sounded  by  Ibsen  in  Ghosts  and  by  Brieux  in  Damaged 
Goods.  Thus,  it  is  to  be  reasoned  along  with  a  Schopen- 
hauer that  the  human  race  like  poisoned  rats  in  a  hole 
should  will  to  die.  The  only  redeeming  feature  in  the 
analysis  of  the  disagreeable  in  Swift's  fiction  is  that  this 
coarseness  of  sardonic,  diabolical  humor  in  portraying  the 
pathos  of  human  life  is  the  strength  of  the  shaft  of  Field- 
ing's or  Smollett's  satirical  spear,  when  it  pricks  the  side 
of  the  reader  to  provoke  hilarious,  unhallowed  laughter 
that  dies  away  in  tears,  which  flow  because  of  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  meanness,  badness,  and  madness  of  the  rogue 
called  man ;  and  this  strange  mingling  of  humor  and  pathos 
in  satirical  caricature,  characterization,  and  dialogue,  Swift 
largely  inherited  as  a  legacy  from  Daniel  Defoe. 

Would  that  Swift  had  only  cared  to  write  his  auto- 
biography— then  we  would  have  had  Stevenson's  Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  in  the  eighteenth  century !  If  he  had 
only  given  us  the  Mr.  Hyde  that  he  played  with  Stella 
and  Vanessa,  or,  in  the  realistic,  historical  novel,  had  built 
something  on  that  Duke  of  Hamilton-Mohun  duel  of 
1 712,  about  which  he  so  succinctly  wrote  in  the  Journal  to 
Stella  in  November,  1712,  perhaps  a  masterpiece  excelling 
Thackeray's  Henry  Esmond  would  have  been  given  to  the 
world. 

Swift  left  the  mark  of  his  purpose  and  style  on  the  novels 


Samuel  Butler's  "Erewhon"  81 

of  Fielding,  Smollett,  Peacock,  Thackeray,  and  in  our 
time  upon  Samuel  Butler  and  H.  G.  Wells.  Samuel 
Butler  in  Erewhon  or  Over  the  Range  (1872)  takes  us  to  a 
Utopia  which  he  places,  probably,  in  New  Zealand.  The 
Erewhonians  believed  that  poverty  was  crime,  and  that 
character  was  perfect  physique.  These  eugenic  inhabit- 
ants suffered  from  fits  of  immorality  in  which  they  forged 
and  raised  checks.  Bad  conduct  they  understood  to  be 
the  result  of  pre-natal  or  post-natal  (influence)  misfortune. 
The  Erewhonians  were  hypochondriacs  on  fancied  evil 
conduct,  for  they  regarded  ill-luck  as  an  offense  against 
society.  They  employed  "  straighteners "  to  rectify  or 
cure  mental  indisposition.  In  Erewhon  there  were  many 
Colleges  of  Unreason  in  which  were  professors  of  evasion 
and  inconsistency.  A  course  in  "hypothetics"  was  abso- 
lutely necessary  before  a  degree  was  granted.  Promi- 
nent educators  endeavored  to  teach  everybody  to  suppress 
originality,  to  effect  a  complete  obliteration  of  the  past, 
to  avoid  the  sin  of  intellectual  indulgence,  to  abandon 
hope  of  achieving  absolute  sanity  because  it  would  drive 
one  mad  if  he  reached  it,  to  abandon  hope  of  being  cured 
of  the  fear-of-giving-one's-self-away  disease,  to  learn  the 
art  of  gracefully  sitting  on  the  fence,  to  check  exuberance 
of  mental  development,  to  avoid  being  immoral  by  being 
ahead  of  one's  epoch,  and  above  all  things  to  strive  to  be 
a  work  of  art, — an  individual  worth  £20,000. 

In  Erewhon  Revisited  (1901)  Higgs  the  hero  of  the 
former  novel  goes  back  to  the  Erewhonians  to  find  himself 
worshiped  as  a  god ;  and  a  bad  god  he  knows  he  had  been 
twenty  years  before  when  he  had  seduced  Yram  and  had 
escaped  from  the  country  with  beautiful  Arowhena  in  a 
balloon,  which  he  had  manufactured  to  the  astonishment 
of  the  natives.  Soon  after  his  return  Higgs  went  into  a 
tabernacle,  which  had  been  erected  in  his  honor,  and 
heard  his  own  words  read  out  to  him  as  being  the  divine 

6 


82  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


£>J 


utterances  of  the  Sunchild,  a  god,  who  was  now  respon- 
sible for  an  illegitimate  George  whom  he  had  recently 
met  for  the  first  time  after  he  had  crossed  over  the  range 
into  Erewhon.  In  Erewhon  all  faith  in  experience  had 
been  shattered  by  a  balloon  ascension.  Sunchildism  had 
become  the  religion  of  the  land.  The  country  had  im- 
proved somewhat  since  his  absence  because  the  natives 
had  been  obeying  one  of  the  Sunchild 's  sayings:  "Resist 
good,  and  it  will  fly  from  you."  They  knew  that  "truth 
is  found  out  through  the  falling  out  of  thieves"  and  "That 
there  is  no  mistake  so  great  as  being  always  right.  "  They 
were  fond  of  taking  spiritual  indigestion  tabloids  guaran- 
teed to  give  lamb-like  tempers  in  twenty  minutes.  They 
employed  professional  mind-dressers  and  had  learned 
much  from  a  text-book  on  The  Art  of  Obscuring  Issues, 
which  had  been  compiled  by  Dr.  Downie,  Professor  of 
Logomachy. 

In  The  Way  of  All  Flesh  (1903),  Samuel  Butler  bids  us 
peer  inside  of  the  cup  of  the  communion  service  of  the 
Anglican  Church.  Ernest,  son  of  Theobald  Pontifex, 
for  many  years  was  unable  to  extricate  himself  from  a 
gang  of  spiritual  thieves.  Ernest  was  early  lost  in  London 
somewhere  between  the  proposed  site  of  the  College  of 
Spiritual  Pathology,  about  to  be  established  by  his  con- 
frere whose  philosophy  of  life  was  that  ' '  one  touch  of  the 
unnatural  makes  the  whole  world  more  kindred  still," 
and  his  hatred  for  a  cold-hearted  curate-father  who  had 
goaded  his  slave-son  into  the  church  and  rated  him  only 
according  to  the  amount  of  money  he  could  earn.  Ernest, 
with  his  reputation  lost,  never  would  have  emerged  tri- 
umphant over  his  slave-master  father  to  take  an  honor- 
able place  in  the  world,  if  it  had  not  been  for  his  aunt's 
legacy.  Butler  would  show  that  without  money  no  man 
can  be  rehabilitated.  In  this  world  all  things  are  forgiven 
a  man  who  is  all  things  to  all  men,  provided  he  has  a  full 


Swift,  Butler,  and  H.  G.  Wells  83 

pocketbook,  or,  peradventure,  a  god-father  who  can  at  all 
times  stake  him  for  another  venture  in  the  poker-game  of 
life.  Throughout  the  novel  the  hypocrisy  of  the  priest- 
hood of  the  Anglican  Church  receives  such  gruesome 
vivisection  as  to  remind  us  of  that  given  it  by  Swift  in 
A  Tale  of  a  Tub.  Butler,  the  grandson  of  a  Bishop  in  the 
Anglican  Church,  has  never  received  the  recognition  that 
he  deserves.  A  few  men  such  as  Augustine  Birrell  and 
Bernard  Shaw  had  read  his  fiction,  but  it  was  not  until 
after  his  death  in  1902  that  he  began  to  come  into  his  own. 
To-day  Butler  is  rapidly  being  recognized  as  our  modern 
Dean  Swift  because  he  takes  such  great  pleasure  in  saying 
what  everybody  would  rather  had  not  been  said  at  all,  but 
which,  of  course,  all  admit  for  the  welfare  of  the  world 
should  be  said  by  some  genius  even  if  society  almost 
invariably  flays  him  alive  for  daring  to  state  that  the  sins 
of  any  individual  arise  from  lack  of  money  and  from  a 
nonconformity  to  conventionality. 

To-day  the  continuer  of  the  radicalism  of  Butler  is 
Herbert  George  Wells  who  expresses  himself  in  Kipps 
(1905)  as  believing  that  environment  for  every  man  is  a 
fixed  round  on  the  social  ladder ;  therefore,  if  one  would  be 
happy  he  should  not  endeavor  to  pull  himself  up  to 
the  round  above.  Wells,  in  The  Research  Magnificent 
(191 5),  urges  the  world  to  free  itself  from  fear,  indulgence, 
jealousy,  and  prejudice,  and  from  false  generalizations, 
for  by  willing  itself  so  to  do  the  world  would  then  achieve 
the  Great  State  as  it  followed  the  dictates  of  a  new  non- 
elastic  conscience  of  the  collective-minded  philosophers 
constituting  the  aristocracy  of  the  few  who  knew  how  to 
govern  an  educated  democracy,  in  which  would  be  neither 
high  class,  nor  middle  class,  nor  low  class.  Interesting, 
indeed,  are  the  Swiftian  touches  in  The  Island  of  Doctor 
Moreau  (1896)  and  The  Food  of  the  Gods  (1904);  but  it 
is,  however,  rather  in  The  First  Men  in  the  Moon  (1901) 


84  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

that  we   catch  Wells  in  his   most  successful  adaptation 
of  Swift's  subject  matter  and  style. 

The  First  Men  in  the  Moon  absorbs  attention  just  as 
Swift's  Voyage  to  Lilliput.  There  are  two  Gullivers  who 
are  captured:  one,  Bedford,  is  fortunate  enough  to  escape 
the  Selenites  to  come  back  to  earth;  the  other,  Cavor, 
remains  to  send  messages  to  earth  until  a  horrible  death 
overtakes  him.  The  novel  is  written  in  the  humorously 
tragical  cynical  spirit  of  Swift;  for,  though  the  moon  is  a 
satellite  of  the  earth,  yet  its  inhabitants  have  progressed 
much  further  in  all  scientific  achievements,  have  bigger 
brains,  and  war  is  undreamed  of.  These  Selenites  live 
within  the  surface  of  the  moon  on  such  a  high  plane  of 
morality  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  trace  of  the  irra- 
tional violence  of  the  internecine  races  of  the  earth. 
Reason  is  sovereign  in  the  form  of  a  Grand  Lunar  sur- 
rounded by  an  aristocracy  of  those  who  know.  At  birth 
each  one  of  the  Grand  Lunar's  subjects  specialized  only 
on  that  for  which  he  seemed  most  fitted,  and  those  who 
were  unfit  were  put  to  sleep  until  they  were  needed  in  the 
Selenites'  activities.  The  Grand  Lunar  is  so  appalled 
by  Cavor's  historical  account  of  man's  advancement  and 
cruelty  that  he  desires  no  interplanetary  tragedy  such  as 
might  come  through  man's  coming  to  the  moon.  To  seize, 
to  slay,  to  get  more  land — this  seems  to  be  man's  slogan 
and  nothing  can  arise  of  good  from  any  intercourse  with 
him;  therefore,  all  wires  between  moon  and  earth  should 
be  cut.  The  Grand  Lunar  has  no  time  to  educate  his 
subjects  for  war,  when  nothing  but  peace  has  been  in  the 
lunar  caves.  Cavor  must  go  to  his  untimely  fate.  That 
civilization  on  the  moon  is  far  ahead  of  ours  is  the  con- 
clusion; and  further,  that  no  unity  has  been  achieved  on 
earth  is  the  Swiftian  laugh  of  H.  G.  Wells  at  our  whole 
life  for  the  last  six  thousand  years.  A  satellite  has  put  us 
to  shame.     The  other  planets  want  none  of  us,  because 


Wells's  "First  Men  in  the  Moon''       85 

they  are  all  moving  mentally  and  physically  to  the  majes- 
tic law  of  order.  The  Grand  Lunar' s  luminous  idea  was 
this:  if  man  is  not  fit  to  dwell  among  Selenites  and  is 
antagonistic  to  their  best,  then  it  would  be  best  for  stellar 
creatures  to  unite  in  his  extinction  lest  at  some  time  man's 
inventions  should  bring  chaos  into  the  order  prevailing  at 
present  in  the  starry  universe.  The  novel  reads  almost  as 
if  Swift  were  again  writing:  Resolved,  That  all  Yahoos 
should  be  exterminated  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  And 
we  must  remember  that  Gulliver  was  considered  by  the 
Houyhnhnms  as  being  far  worse  than  a  Yahoo. 


CHAPTER  III 

Samuel  Richardson,  Henry   Fielding,   SaraK 
Fielding,  and  Tobias  Smollett 

ON  the  road  from  Swift  to  Richardson  there  is  no 
escaping  the  "character"  writings  of  Steele  and 
Addison  who,  though  they  can  not  be  termed 
novelists,  yet  contributed  material  which,  when  some  of  it 
was  accepted  by  Richardson  and  his  successors,  helped 
give  modern  tone  and  form  to  the  English  novel.  Before 
the  publication  of  The  Tatler  (i  709-11)  and  The  Spectator 
(1711-12),  in  the  preceding  century  there  had  appeared 
Bishop  Joseph  Hall's  The  Characters  of  Vices  and  Virtues 
(1608),  Sir  Thomas  Overbury's  Characters  (1614),  John 
Earle's  Microcosmographie,  a  Piece  of  the  World  Dis- 
covered in  Essays  and  Characters  (1628),  and,  across  the 
Channel  in  France,  Jean  La  Bruyere's  Les  Caracteres,  ou 
Les  Mceurs  de  ce  Siecle  (1688- 1694).  Some  scholars  claim 
that  Steele  and  Addison  were  not  so  much  affected  by  the 
generalized  "characters"  of  the  type  of  Overbury's  as  by 
the  individualized  character-essays  of  La  Bruyere,  and 
point  to  Steele  who  patterned  many  of  his  essays  after  the 
genre  of  those  found  in  Les  Caracteres.  But  in  contem- 
plating Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  who  was  first  introduced 
to  us  by  Steele,  one  feels  that  such  a  characterization  was 
not  brought  across  the  Channel  in  the  type  of  a  personage 
packed  in  French  gold-foil  to  be  later  unfolded  into  per- 
sonality by  the  great  Addison.    Sir  Roger  is  a  true  born 

86 


Addison's  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley        87 

Englishman  who,  in  his  birth,  probably  received  no  touch 
of  characterization  from  La  Bruyere.  Even  in  such  a 
generalized  character-essay  as  Overbury's  A  Franklin  are 
floating  the  attributes  of  a  rural  gentleman  that  could  have 
suggested  to  Steele  and  Addison  the  creation  of  Sir  Roger 
de  Coverley  who,  in  171 1,  was  to  take  his  station  in  the 
hall  in  Worcestershire  and  be  as  much  within  the  type 
of  country-gentleman  as  Matthew  Bramble,  of  Bramble- 
ton-hall,  Monmouthshire,  in  Smollett's  Humphry  Clinker 

(i77i)- 

In  the  "Characters  of  the  Members  of  the  Club  at  'The 
Trumpet,'"  in  The  Tatler  (1709-10)  Steele  presented  class 
types  moving  into  faint  individualization.  Then,  too, 
we  should  remember  that  it  was  Steele  who  created  the 
perverse,  beautiful  creature  "in  a  widow's  habit"  that 
had  a  hand  too  fine  to  give  to  Sir  Roger.  This  widow, 
behind  whose  fan  is  concealed  the  agony  of  forty  years 
of  old  Sir  Roger's  life  and  on  whose  fine  finger  never 
sparkled  the  diamond  ring  for  which  he  had  parted  with  a 
hundred  acres  of  his  lands,  was  later  to  pass  from  per- 
sonage to  personality  and  receive  a  heart,  when  far  down 
in  English  fiction  on  the  pages  of  Thackeray  we  see 
Madame  de  Florae  kneeling  by  the  bed  of  the  dying 
Colonel  Newcome,  whose  life  had  been  darkened  for  forty 
years  by  the  cruel  fate  that  had  sent  his  sweetheart  into 
the  arms  of  a  French  nobleman  and  himself  out  to  India — 
the  land  of  the  new-killed,  living  restless  dead.  But  we 
must  also  recall  the  fact  that  it  was  Addison  who,  to 
finish  this  novel  in  serial  form,  took  upon  himself  the 
honor  of  killing  Sir  Roger  saying,  "By  God!  I'll  kill  Sir 
Roger  that  nobody  else  may  murder  him";  and  the 
pathetic  account  of  the  passing  of  the  good  knight  shifts 
us  all  the  way  to  the  "Adsum"  of  Colonel  Newcome,  and 
to  the  descent  of  Thackeray  from  his  study  solemnly  to 
enunciate  with  tears  in  his  eyes  the  words,  "My  God! 


88  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


&' 


I've  killed  Colonel  Newcome."  Just  a  year  before  com- 
pleting his  masterpiece  Addison  composed  "The  Vision  of 
Mirza,"  in  The  Spectator ,  in  which  is  the  oriental  bridge 
on  which  Samuel  Johnson  built  his  Rasselas  (1759).  No 
happiness  came  to  any  mortal  who  tried  to  cross  the 
arches  erected  in  the  hollow  valley  of  Bagdad,  nor  was  it 
to  be  found  in  or  outside  of  the  Prince  of  Abyssinia's 
happy  valley.  Addison's  The  Adventures  of  a  Shilling 
(1710)  in  The  Taller  perhaps  gave  the  hint  for  Charles 
Johnstone's  Adventures  of  a  Guinea  (1760-65). 

Steele  not  only  aided  Addison  in  shifting  individualiza- 
tion into  characterization  in  his  character-essays,  but  in 
his  own  original  way  gave  tone  and  form  to  what  was 
later  scenically  enlarged  upon  by  so  great  a  master  work- 
man as  Samuel  Richardson.  In  ' '  The  Story  of  Unnion  and 
Valentine,"  "Philander  and  Chloe,"  and  "Upon  the  Death 
of  My  Father,"  in  The  Tatler  (1709-10),  Steele  helped  to 
give  the  power  to  feel  and  live  miniature  scenes  which  tower 
in  pathos  of  climactic  incidents  on  a  field  of  battle,  in  a 
burning  theatre,  and  in  a  coffin  that  reverberates  with  the 
sound  of  a  battledore  in  the  hands  of  a  five-year-old  child. 
Steele  at  the  end  of  "Philander  and  Chloe"  as  the  flames  in 
the  theatre  are  consuming  the  hero  and  his  sweetheart  says, 
"I  can't  go  on";  thus  he  actually  feels  his  pathos.  And 
by  means  of  a  tenderly  depicted  death-bed  scene,  such  as 
that  wherein  Steele  in  1709  bids  us  briefly  linger  to  take 
farewell  of  a  young  wife,  is  prepared  the  long  stay  in  a 
room  in  which  Richardson  in  1748  is  seen  solicitously 
bending  over  a  coffin  morbidly  to  analyze  the  gradual 
dissolution  and  death  of  the  ill-fated  Clarissa  Harlowe. 

While  Defoe,  Swift,  Steele,  and  Addison  were  writing, 
Mrs.  Mary  Manley  had  been  manufacturing  fiction  which 
could  be  called  an  "  Open  Sesame  "  to  the  court  of  scandal, 
and  which  had  a  pernicious  effect  on  the  earlier  novels  of 
Mrs.  Eliza  Haywood.    When  not  copying  Mrs.  Manley's 


Richardson's  Pamela  89 

manner,  Mrs.  Haywood  was  modeling  her  work  after  that 
of  Defoe  and  Mrs.  Behn  as  in  the  study  of  an  unfortunate 
mistress  in  Idalia  (1723).  Then,  like  a  chameleon,  as 
Samuel  Richardson  with  his  Pamela  and  Clarissa  passed 
by  her,  Mrs.  Haywood  took  the  color  of  the  pressure  of 
his  sentiment  to  shade  and  reshade  the  misfortunes  of  the 
fourteen-year-old  virtuous  Miss  Betsy  Thoughtless  in 
1 75 1,  and  crawled  as  far  as  to  Sir  Charles  Grandison 
in  Jemmy  and  Jenny  Jessamy  (1753). 

Now  who  was  this  Pamela  of  1740  who  set  the  pattern 
for  heroines  in  English  fiction  to  become  whiter  or  blacker 
as  they  came  into  contact  with  fascinating,  designing 
gentlemen  of  quality?  Pamela  can  be  regarded  as  a  dis- 
satisfied nun  tantalizing  a  man  to  real  marriage  in  his  own 
seraglio.  At  the  age  of  fifteen  she  possesses  a  free,  easy, 
charming  style  of  writing,  and  is  well  read  in  the  Bible 
and  Shakespeare,  and  is  fond  of  dress.  In  fact  she  is  a 
beautiful  feminine  mongoose,  thus  proving  herself  to  be 
an  antidote  to  the  poison  of  the  frequent  pressure  of  her 
master's  lips  and  to  the  bribery  of  his  gifts.  At  times, 
when  we  think  that  she  is  going  to  become  a  George 
Eliot's  Hetty  Sorrel,  she  passes  into  a  Charlotte  Bronte's 
Jane  Eyre  beating  Mr.  B.  into  virtuous  conduct  in 
precisely  the  same  manner  as  Jane  parried  the  passionate 
attacks  of  Rochester.  She  is  a  tricksy  little  piece  of 
femininity;  and,  when  she  is  not  scribbling  between 
blubbering  and  kissing,  her  heart  is  always  fluttering 
as  she  falls  into  opportune  fits.  Pamela  is  a  puzzling 
puss  like  Emily  Bronte's  Catharine  Linton  or  Charlotte 
Bronte's  Jane  Eyre,  because  she  can  at  all  times  hold  to 
her  bosom  a  sword  of  innocence  so  that  she  can  show  an 
untarnished  marriage  ring  to  Lady  Davers.  But  at  the 
same  time  there  is  a  feeling  that,  if  it  had  not  been  for 
some  of  her  attributes  of  character,  Mrs.  Inchbald  in 
A  Simple  Story  (1791)  could  never  have  made  Miss  Milner 


90  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

to  fall  or  Thackeray  his  Beatrix  Esmond  to  err.  In  the 
great  scene  between  Pamela  and  Lady  Davers  in  Mr.  B.'s 
house,  situated  on  his  rural  estate  in  Lincolnshire,  the 
onlooker  senses  the  fact  that  there  is  life  to  this  little 
creature  who,  though  compelled  to  flee  through  the  parlor 
window  by  the  force  of  the  virago's  tongue  and  threatened 
personal  violence,  comes  back  from  a  whist  game  in 
company  with  the  loyal  ally  of  a  husband  to  bring  Lady 
Davers,  the  sister  of  Mr.  B.'s,  to  bay,  to  submission,  and 
to  the  actual  bestowal  of  affection  upon  herself.  English 
fiction,  after  1740,  no  longer  dwelt  in  the  shadow  and  the 
dumb  show  of  the  rhetoric  of  the  chimerical  characteriza- 
tions of  its  heroines.  Convincing  feminine  personality 
had  arrived  by  means  of  a  gigantic  duel  of  sex.  In  Mrs. 
Behn's  nouvelle  The  Fair  Jilt  it  had  been  the  woman  of  the 
world  trying  to  destroy  the  man  of  God;  in  Pamela  it  is 
the  woman  of  God  pitted  against  the  man  of  the  world. 

In  Clarissa  Harlowe  (1747-48)  the  problem  presented  is 
the  man  of  the  world  vs.  the  woman  of  God.  Plebeian 
Pamela  Andrews  of  1740  came  out  victorious  in  her  long 
fight  with  aristocratic  Mr.  B.;  but  aristocratic  Clarissa 
Harlowe  of  1748  went  down  before  the  onslaught  of 
Robert  Lovelace,  a  man  of  quality.  This  Lovelace  is  a 
character  on  the  order  of  Ranger,  in  Hoadley's  The  Sus- 
picions Husband  (1747),  who,  whenever  he  saw  a  rope 
dangling  from,  or  a  ladder  leaning  against,  a  balcony,  was 
impelled  by  the  madcap  spirit  of  intrigue  to  climb  to  find 
what  surely  he  knew  would  be  there  to  be  captured — a 
woman.  Lovelace  was  a  veteran  of  many  successful 
amours ;  and  that  in  one  he  should  be  balked  this  he  could 
not  brook.  He  was  a  well-dressed,  handsome,  college- 
bred  man  who  moved  with  such  grace  as  to  appeal  to 
Clarissa,  since  she  could  look  upon  him  as  being  an  adorn- 
ment to  the  social  set  in  which  she  walked.  At  first 
he  thought  that  Clarissa  would  quickly  succumb  to  his 


Richardson's  Clarissa  Harlowe  91 

charms,  but  soon  he  felt  that  it  would  be  necessary  to 
break  the  backbone  of  her  pride.  This  view  of  the  situa- 
tion he  took  after  his  attacks  for  many  months  had  all 
been  foiled  by  her.  Lovelace  did  not  love  her:  it  was 
simply  the  love-chase  as  he  had  always  conceived  it — a 
chase  that  was  only  rightly  run  when  it  ended  at  the 
place  where  the  quarry  was  cut  and  quartered.  Clarissa 
never  during  her  entire  association  with  Lovelace  told 
him  to  his  face  that  she  actually  loved  him ;  and  this  cold- 
ness of  her  frozen  virtue — this  lack  of  passion — led  him  on 
to  break  pride's  backbone.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he 
became  susceptible  to  the  lure  of  the  impossible ;  and  any 
other  man  of  his  type  would  have  abandoned  such  a 
hopeless  chase,  for  the  genuine  man  of  the  world  persists 
not  so  long  in  wasting  his  time  in  endeavoring  dishonestly 
to  capture  a  woman's  citadel.  Later  in  1751  Smollett 
presented  Peregrine  Pickle  in  the  role  of  Lovelace  who, 
however,  when  repulsed  was  thereby  piqued  from  passion 
into  proper  love  for  Emilia  Gauntlet,  whom  he  was  as 
mad  to  marry  as  he  had  been  to  seduce;  and  Peregrine 
throws  himself  into  matrimonial  bonds,  because  otherwise 
the  chase  would  have  been  hopeless.  Lovelace  was  daring, 
conniving,  arrogant,  but  not  quite  a  snob,  and  well  re- 
presented what  many  of  the  noblemen  of  that  time  were. 
Clarissa  was  fascinated;  and  it  is  too  bad  that  in  encour- 
aging the  snake  to  manoeuvre  she  had  not  the  Pamela- 
mongoose  teeth  or  the  Jane  Eyre-Catharine  Linton 
shield  and  sword  with  which  to  protect  purity  when 
attacked.  Why  did  she  not  flee  to  Anna  Howe  who  would 
have  gladly  taken  her  in?  And,  even  if  she  was  not  in 
control  of  her  moneys  and  estate,  money  could  have  been 
advanced  when  she  needed  it  most  to  carry  herself  beyond 
Lovelace's  power. 

Clarissa   is   depicted   as   colorless   and   passionless  by 
reason  of  the  cruel  home  treatment  that  had  been  given 


92  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

her;  and  Lovelace  is  portrayed  almost  as  an  unmoral 
abstraction.  Never  at  any  time  is  there  any  evidence  of 
remorse  on  the  part  of  the  scoundrel  for  the  iniquity 
committed.  His  ' '  Let  this  expiate ! "  is  in  accord  with  the 
view  of  life  such  as  an  eighteenth-century  man  of  his  type 
took.  Lovelace  deemed  that  his  offer  of  marriage  and 
the  manner  of  his  death  atoned  for  all  that  he  had  done  to 
Clarissa;  and  he  was  as  certain  that  he  would  meet  her 
in  heaven  as  that  his  suffering  after  the  duel  with  Colonel 
Morden  would  restore  his  name  to  the  book  from  which 
it  had  been  canceled.  He  had  always  been  forgiven  all 
along  the  way  by  the  divine  Clarissa — heavenly  purity — 
and  why  should  he  not  expect  that  Clarissa's  God  of 
purity  would  extend  everlasting  forgiveness  to  him?  He 
who  had  not  treated  Clarissa  generously  thought  that  he 
had  acted  most  generously  in  offering  her  marriage  and 
his  life  on  the  point  of  the  sword  in  the  hand  of  Colonel 
Morden,  the  avenger  of  the  house  of  Harlowes.  He  died 
as  he  had  lived.  His  old  excuse — the  trump  card  the  only 
one  he  had  ever  used  in  his  dark,  sure  game  with  Clarissa — 
would  surely  carry  weight  in  the  next  world's  game  as  in 
this.  Lovelace,  when  compelled  'even  to  the  teeth  and 
forehead  of  his  faults  to  give  in  evidence'  before  the 
judgment  seat  of  eternal  justice,  would  probably  have 
spoken  much  in  this  fashion:  "Surely  such  a  refined, 
polished  gentleman  as  Robert  Lovelace  you  could  not 
suspect  of  being  at  the  bottom  of  such  a  pernicious  plot 
as  that  of  drugging  the  divine  Clarissa,  but  now,  seeing 
that  all  my  mistakes  have  been  made  manifest  in  the 
purlieus  of  heaven,  I  ask  that  God  forgive  one  who  expects 
to  be  forgiven;  for  I  am  such  a  splendid  fellow  that  you 
will  not  have  the  heart  to  refuse  me  any  more  than 
Clarissa  was  able  to  refuse  to  forgive  me,  as  for  example, 
after  she  found  out  that  I  had  plotted  setting  fire  to  the 
house  so  as  to  drive  her  in  undress  costume  into  my  arms. 


Stevenson's  James  Durie  93 

And  after  she  ascertained  that  I  ruined  her  did  she  not  on 
her  death-bed  ask  that  I  should  repent  so  that  I  might 
come  to  where  she  was  going?  She  always  forgave  me 
after  I  had  hurt  her  most.  I  promise  to  behave  myself 
handsomely  hereafter — for  the  rest  of  eternity."  This 
is  Lovelace — almost  if  not  quite  a  piece  of  consistent 
characterization  of  unmorality — in  whose  heart  always 
an  almighty  devil  is  singing  small. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  James  Durie  in  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae  (1889)  has  more  of  the  genuine  devil  in  him 
and  stands  ethically,  though  not  artistically,  twice  as  high 
in  our  estimation.  It  was  this  college-bred  Durie  that  in 
the  middle  of  the  Atlantic  with  the  air  of  a  connoisseur 
turned  over  the  pages  of  Richardson  to  interpret  with  rare 
grace  to  old  Mackellar  all  the  sinuous  beauties  of  the 
characterization  of  Lovelace.  Mackellar  could  not  help 
but  admire  Durie  even  when  trying  to  kick  him  overboard ; 
and  we  too  can  applaud  this  devil  to  a  certain  extent 
because,  having  been  foiled  by  his  brother's  beautiful 
wife,  this  man  was  man  enough  not  to  stoop  to  drug  a 
woman  so  as  to  capture  her  virtue.  Can  one  imagine 
Milton's  Satan  thus  losing  caste  in  hell?  The  true 
Apollyon  meets  you  face  to  face  in  the  Valley  of  Humilia- 
tion; and  when  he  is  defeated,  the  valley  belongs  to  you 
and  yours.  When  repulsed  by  a  woman  who  actually 
loved  him,  James  Durie  fled  the  amour  and  the  country; 
and  we  somewhat  respect  this  devil,  even  though  he  is  not 
magnetized  by  the  ten  commandments,  because  he  has 
the  ruined  Archangel's  blood  in  his  bones.  And  similar 
to  Durie  in  Gilbert  Parker's  Seats  of  the  Mighty  (1896)  is 
handsome  Monsieur  Devil  Doltaire,  half -prince  and  half- 
peasant,  who  quotes  Moliere,  Shakespeare,  and  the  poets, 
with  the  persuasive  tongue  of  Milton's  Belial,  yet  with  all 
his  fascinating  qualities  is  unable  to  win  Alixe,  the  wife  of 
Robert  Moray.     Doltaire  is  as  sure  as  Lovelace  that  he 


94  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

will  capture  the  virtue  of  a  woman  who  emotionally  is  at 
all  times  his ;  but,  at  the  critical  moment  as  Alixe  is  sinking 
forward  into  his  arms,  he  overdoes  his  part  by  daring  to 
quote  "till  death  us  do  part"  from  the  marriage  ritual. 
Forever  will  sing  in  his  memory  Alixe 's  hauntingly  sweet 
words,  "Monsieur,  if  you  had  been  honest,  I  could  have 
worshipped  you."  And  Doltaire  retreats  bewildered, 
wondering  why  before  he  had  not  known  that  honesty  in 
man  is  the  greatest  quality  a  woman  hopes  to  find  before 
she  flings  him  her  heart  to  keep.  This  small  devil  Doltaire 
was  as  fascinating  in  death  as  he  had  been  in  life;  for 
Robert  Moray  is  afraid  as  he  looks  upon  his  corpse,  upon 
the  breast  of  which  is  gleaming  in  the  light  of  the  candles 
the  Star  of  Louis,  lest  it  might  rise  up  and  be  this  time 
successful  with  Alixe. 

Let  us  for  a  moment  return  to  the  nineteen-year-old 
Clarissa  whose  one  great  weakness  was  seeking  Lovelace 
as  a  refuge.  Difficult  indeed  is  it  to  find  an  excuse  for  this 
action  and  its  constant  recurrence,  and  one  must  not 
throw  the  entire  blame  of  her  downfall  on  her  family. 
It  seems  that  at  any  time,  if  she  had  had  Pamela's  spunk, 
she  could  have  handled  Lovelace;  for  Clarissa  finally, 
after  many  experiences,  among  which  was  that  of  the 
fearful  agony  undergone  in  Rowland's  den  in  which  she 
was  imprisoned  for  the  debt  of  £150,  was  no  more  in- 
experienced than  Pamela  and  surely  should  have  baffled 
the  recalcitrant  rover,  especially  one  who  moved  within 
the  circle  of  her  own  class.  She  seems  to  be  a  beautiful 
bit  of  allegory  supported  on  a  pageant  boat  moving  on  the 
surface  of  the  slow  current  that  makes  for  the  precipice, 
on  either  side  of  which  we  see  eighteenth-century  women 
standing  and  shrieking  out,  as  the  radiant  angel  goes  over 
minus  her  virtue,  "How  could  you  after  all  our  entreaties 
destroy  such  an  ornament  of  our  sex  and  of  the  human 
race?"      We    see    Samuel    Richardson    advancing    with 


Richardson's  Harriet  Byron  95 

Pamela  to  comfort  his  friends  by  saying,  "This  girl,  if  she 
had  been  an  abstraction,  would  have  perished  exactly  like 
Clarissa.  What  Mr.  B.  could  not  kill,  I  could  not  kill— 
a  woman  with  a  heart."  It  is  always  easier  for  an  author 
to  kill  a  symbolic  figure  than  one  of  real  flesh  and  blood. 
There  are  some  who  consider  Clarissa  not  an  entity  of 
mirage  morality;  but  to  most  of  us,  she  is  simply  an  ala- 
baster cast  of  pride  demanding  the  coup  de  grace,  which  it 
was  imperative  that  Richardson  should  give  her.  In  this 
respect  Clarissa  is  a  piece  of  consistent  characterization. 

Another  attractive  heroine  of  Richardson's  is  the  curly- 
headed,   carmine-cheeked,   rosy-lipped,    dimpled-chinned, 
twenty-year-old   Miss  Harriet  Byron,  of  Northampton- 
shire, who  has  a  smattering  of  French  and  Italian  and  can 
palm  off  as  if  original  second-hand  opinions  about  Homer, 
Milton,  Swift,  Addison,  and  Pope.     It  takes  the  reader 
three  hundred   and   twenty-eight    pages   in  Sir   Charles 
Grandison  to  know  whether  Miss  Byron  will  prove  imper- 
vious to  "the  gay  Greville,  the   adulative  Fen  wick,  the 
obsequious  Orme,  the  imploring  Fowler,  and  the  shocking 
Sir  Hargrave";  that  is,  the  reader  is  at  the  end  of  volume 
one  before  Harriet  is  entangled  in  a  hopeless  passion  for 
Sir  Charles  Grandison,  who  is  to  become  a  Daniel  Deronda 
so  far  as  the  pattern  of  perfection  is  concerned  in  English 
fiction.     In  reality,  throughout  the  seven  volumes,  Miss 
Byron  carries  superbly  only  one  great  scene  in  which  as  an 
Arcadian  princess  she  is  carried  off  from  the  Haymarket 
Theatre  by  Sir  Hargrave  Pollexfen  to  be  gallantly  rescued 
at  Lissom  Green,  about  two  miles  this  side  of  Hounslow, 
by  Sir  Charles  in  a  chariot-and-six.     This  stirring  scene 
influenced  subsequent  English  novelists  such  as  Regina 
Maria  Roche  in  The  Children  of  the  Abbey  (1796?)  and 
Mary  Brunton  in  Self-Control  (1810)  to  give  their  heroines 
the  thrilling  sensation  derived  from  such  an  episodic  bit 
of  excitement. 


96  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

The  Italian  girl  Lady  Clementina  della  Porretta,  visible 
at  the  beginning  of  the  third  volume  of  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son,  is  perhaps  a  greater  finger-tip  thriller  than  Pamela 
and  is  far  more  interesting  than  Harriet  Byron.  Not  long 
after  rescuing  Harriet,  Sir  Charles  had  gone  to  Bologna, 
Italy,  to  see  this  girl  Clementina  whom  he  had  once 
taught  English,  and  who  had  gone  mad  on  account  of 
love  for  him.  The  pathos  of  her  delirium  is  the  fierce 
conflict  between  religion  and  love.  She  says  to  Sir  Charles, 
"Oh,  sir,  could  you  have  been  a  Catholic?"  Parental 
control  and  nunnery  walls  had  not  been  able  to  stifle  her 
affection  for  her  old  instructor,  so  that  the  Porretta  family 
had  drawn  up  religious  regulations  whereby  the  poor  girl 
could  have  her  heart's  darling.  Then  suddenly  she  comes 
to  realize  that,  if  he  had  really  loved  her,  he  would  have 
turned  Catholic,  and  spurns  his  real  compassion,  bidding 
him  go  back  to  his  own  country  and  marry  an  English 
woman.  That  she  had  given  him  the  utmost  passion  of 
her  heart  one  never  questions  as  he  listens  to  the  pathetic 
words,  "But  will  you,  must  you,  will  you  go?"  uttered  by 
her  to  Sir  Charles  as  they  part  on  the  stairs.  Sir  Charles 
returns  to  England  and  swiftly  carries  out  her  request 
by  marrying  Miss  Harriet  Byron.  Then  Richardson  an 
artist  in  effecting  the  unexpected  permits  the  sweet, 
languorous,  wild,  black-eyed  enthusiast  Clementina  to 
make  a  dash  across  the  English  Channel  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  Harriet  in  the  midst  of  domestic  joys;  and  at  this  point 
he  could  very  well  have  ended  the  novel  by  taking  us 
inside  of  a  convent  to  take  an  everlasting  farewell  of 
Clementina  as  a  mad  nun,  but  instead  he  chooses  to  make 
us  imaginatively  construct  a  church  with  its  marriage 
altar,  before  which  is  standing  the  shadow  of  Count  Bel- 
vedere. All  that  we  know  in  regard  to  the  future  of 
Clementina  is  that  she  seems  to  yield  to  this  Count  from 
motives  of  duty  to  her  parents.     Strange,  indeed,  is  this 


Richardson's  Clementina  97 

Italian  woman's  action  when  from  motives  of  religion  she 
had  rejected  a  man  a  thousand  times  the  weight  of 
Belvedere.  The  great  novel  closes  with  Sir  Charles  away 
from  Harriet  at  Calais  giving  final  injunctions  to  Clemen- 
tina which  must  have  made  his  wife  a  little  uneasy. 
Perhaps  after  all  Clementina  was  happy  and  intended  to 
marry  the  Count  because  Sir  Charles  had  not  married  the 
Italian  Olivia  who  had  been  chasing  him  all  over  Europe. 

Clementina  is  a  splendid  study  in  the  pathology  of 
madness;  and  as  there  is  a  doctor  to  attend  Lady  Macbeth 
so  is  there  one  to  diagnose  and  report  on  Clementina's 
delirium.  Raving  in  talking  fits  and  holding  out  a  lovely 
bloody  arm  she  glides  before  us;  and,  when  she  is  in  the 
keeping  of  Lady  Sforza  and  her  daughter  Laurana  in  their 
palace  at  Milan,  we  see  the  dreadful  strait-jacket  put 
on  to  break  the  religious  melancholia  and  dementia. 
Clementina,  the  tour  de  force  that  carries  the  interest  of 
the  seven  volumes  of  Sir  Charles  Grandison,  will  always 
reign  regnant  as  the  first  of  our  great  mad  women  in  Eng- 
lish fiction,  surpassing  her  direct  descendant  Laurentini  di 
Udolpho,  the  mad  nun  in  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  The 
Mysteries  of  Udolpho  (1794). 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  Clementina  della  Porretta 
beckoning  to  certain  mad  ladies  to  make  a  formation 
before  her.  We  see  in  Henry  Mackenzie's  Man  of  Feeling 
(1771)  a  Bedlam  in  which  an  imbecile  girl  is  extending  a 
gold-threaded  ring  to  tearful  Harley;  we  see  Sophia  Lee's 
insane  Ellinor  in  The  Recess  (1783-86)  denouncing  Queen 
Elizabeth  for  the  murder  of  the  Earl  of  Essex;  Mrs.  Ann 
Radcliffe's  Laurentini  in  the  throes  of  remorse  for  having 
poisoned  the  Marchioness  de  Villeroi;  Maria  Edgeworth's 
hysterical  Lady  Delacour  threatening  Belinda  Portman; 
Scott's  Madge  Wildfire  on  the  straw  singing,  "In  the 
bonny  cells  of  Bedlam,"  Lucy  Ashton  in  the  fireplace 
gibbering  as  she  glances  at  her  blood-stained  nightgown, 


98  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


Ulrica  in  flames  dancing  down  Torquilstone  Castle,  Noma 
studying  the  fitful  clouds  above  the  Orkney  Islands; 
Letitia  Landon's  mad  wife  of  Zoridos's  in  Romance  and 
Reality  (1831),  and  Lady  Marchmont,  in  Ethel  Churchill 
or  the  Two  Brides  (1837),  giving  prussic  acid  to  detested 
husband  and  faithless  lover,  Sir  George  Kingston;  the 
mad  wife  of  Rochester's  tearing  to  pieces  Jane  Eyre's 
bridal  veil;  and  Emily  Bronte's  Catharine  Linton.  Clem- 
entina, in  delirium  recalling  her  happier  days  with  Sir 
Charles,  is  only  surpassed  by  mad  Catharine  Linton,  at 
Thrushcross  Grange  in  her  bed-chamber,  picking  from  her 
pillow  feathers  with  which  to  decorate  the  coverlet  for 
fancy's  flight  along  that  rough  road  by  which  her  sad 
heart  travels  back  to  childhood,  when  she  breathed  the 
fresh  air  up  at  the  Heights  in  her  oak-paneled  bed  beside 
the  lattice  scraped  by  the  firs  and  romped  over  the  moors 
with  her  black  gipsy  boy  lover,  Heathcliff,  and  dared  the 
ghosts  of  Gimmerton  kirkyard  by  moonlight. 

We  glance  again  at  the  formation  and  see  other  de- 
mented creatures  such  as  Charles  Dickens's  the  mad 
little  Miss  Flite  in  Bleak  House  who  is  counting  up  the 
wards  in  Jarndyce  or  the  caged  birds  that  she  has 
named  Hope,  Joy,  Youth,  Peace,  Rest,  Life,  Dust,  Ashes, 
Waste,  Want,  Ruin,  Despair,  Madness,  Death,  Cunning, 
Folly,  Words,  Wigs,  Rags,  Sheepskin,  Plunder,  Prece- 
dent, Jargon,  Gammon,  and  Spinach;  and  Miss  Havisham 
in  Great  Expectations  sitting  in  a  bride-to-be  banquet  hall 
watching  the  clock,  which  had  stopped  at  the  hour  that 
told  that  her  bridegroom  would  never  come,  and  observing 
the  moldy  bridecake  still  on  the  table.  Not  a  thing  in  the 
room  has  been  disturbed;  the  guests  have  long  since  fled, 
but  she  remains  an  inexorable  figure  of  fate  pointing  in 
madness  to  one  of  the  greatest  calamities  that  can  come  to 
a  human  being.  In  the  long  line  one  also  sees  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward's  Louie,  sister  of  David  Grieve,  seeking  escape 


Mad  Women  in  English  Fiction  99 

from  a  loveless  world  just  as  her  mother  had  done  years 
before,  and  in  Eleanor  Manisty's  sister  terrifying  Lucy 
Foster;  William  De  Morgan's  Old  Jane  in  Alice- For-Short 
in  Bedlam  from  whom  for  forty-five  years  broken-hearted 
Verrinder  had  been  waiting  for  a  look  or  word  of  recogni- 
tion; and  Mrs.  Harrison's  the  neurotic  Joanna  Smyrth- 
waite  in  Adrian  Savage  relieving  herself  from  the  painful 
pressure  of  a  Victorian  code  of  conventional  conduct  by 
taking  the  deadly  sleeping  potion.  And  for  all  this  painful 
display  of  shattered  intellects  Samuel  Richardson  paved 
the  way. 

By  means  of  Richardson's  sentiment  artificially  used 
to  breathe  life  into  shadowy  characterizations,  which 
seem  to  delight  in  clandestine  letters  buried  somewhere 
near  a  sunflower  in  a  garden,  or  preserved  under  a 
brick,  or  thrust  under  a  door,  Fielding  made  sentiment 
genuine  with  the  strength  of  satire  and  animated  sub- 
stantial characterizations  whose  environment  is  not  hazily 
localized.  Fielding's  characters  are  not  imprisoned  in 
a  country  garden  chasing  Clarissa  Harlowe's  poultry. 
They  seem  to  be  all  on  the  move  from  the  country  to  the 
city  that  on  the  way  or  after  they  reach  the  city  they  may 
be  endowed  with  the  nakedness  of  clear-cut  characteriza- 
tion and  be  given  a  scenery  as  a  lodestone  to  draw  big 
places  for  them  to  stand  on  and  do  big  things  as  the  large 
coarse  life  of  the  eighteenth  century  passes  by  with  its 
ozone  to  redden  their  blood  corpuscles. 

Fielding  possessed  a  fine  dramatic  instinct  that  is 
detectable  not  so  much  in  his  plays  as  in  his  novels.  In 
Joseph  Andrews  (1742)  in  putting  the  ridiculous  on  the 
canvas  Fielding,  as  he  proclaims  himself  in  the  Introduc- 
tion, is  a  follower  of  Ben  Jonson  by  taking  the  hypocritical 
affectation  of  the  world  as  an  attractive  theme.  Fielding 
believes  that  the  analysis  of  vices  arising  from  foibles 
lends  vigor  to  the  portrayal  of  affectation  in  characteriza- 


ioo  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

tion.  In  studying  the  source  of  the  ridiculous  he  clearly 
shows  by  means  of  his  pocket-theatre  that  it  is  possible  to 
make  detestable  the  vice  which  provokes  laughter;  and 
not  only  this  but  also  that  the  character  wearing  the  mask 
of  hypocritical  affectation  may  in  time  learn  to  detest  it 
as  much  as  the  onlooker.  Out  of  the  coarse  laughter  and 
above  this  low  comedy,  caused  by  the  antics  of  characters 
carrying  hypocrisy,  arises  that  serious  humor  or  thought- 
ful laughter  which  not  only  makes  all  the  contemplators 
better  but  also  all  the  characters  parading  in  the  vestments 
of  hypocritical  affectation,  who  perhaps  by  seeing  them- 
selves held  up  to  ridicule  may  redeem  their  faults  by 
flinging  aside  the  garments  of  hypocrisy  picked  up  on  life's 
enchanted  ground.  Fielding  in  Joseph  Andrews  taught 
man  to  laugh  at  his  own  true  caricature  as  the  poet 
Shelley  smiled  at  Scythrop  in  Peacock's  Nightmare  Abbey 
(1818).  Scythrop  should  have  made  a  better  man  out  of 
Shelley,  since  to  have  seen  his  own  hypocritical  dual 
nature  portrayed  in  all  its  unpleasant  weaknesses  and 
idiosyncrasies  should  have  made  him  detest  such  charac- 
teristics and  desire  to  become  the  genuine  man  whom 
Peacock,  his  friend,  so  much  admired. 

The  key  to  the  character  of  Parson  Adams  is  the  carica- 
ture of  the  curacy  of  England;  and  thus  many  an  English 
parson  must  have  laughed  at  himself.  And  many  an 
English  clergyman  who  had  been  pleased  with  the  duck- 
ing of  the  curate  Mr.  Williams  in  the  mill  pond  in  Pamela 
must  have  been  delighted  with  the  pleasing  continuation 
of  him  as  the  absent-minded,  pugnacious,  near-sighted 
Parson  Adams  going  up  to  London  with  a  crabstick  in 
hand  and  a  copy  of  ^Eschylus,  instead  of  his  own  sermons, 
in  his  pocket,  to  become  acquainted  with  sharpers,  rakes, 
jail-birds,  and  women  on  the  order  of  Mrs.  Slipslop,  who 
plunge  him  into  experiences  far  worse  than  those  that 
can  come  by  being  dipped  into  a  mill  pond.     Fielding,  in 


Fielding's  "Joseph  Andrews"  101 

delineating  Parson  Adams,  keeps  nearer  tq  Congreve  than 
to  Jonson,  who  believes  that  humor  is  a  dominant  jnood , 
derived  from  some  mixture  of  the  blood,  physiologically 
gaining    the    ascendancy    over    a    character.      Jonson 's 
creatures  are  not  well  rounded  or  human  because  their 
superficial  qualities  are  stressed;  they  are  external  por- 
traitures.   Congreve  believes  that  humor  is  possessed  by  a 
man  who  acts  according  to  the  characteristics  which  are 
peculiar  to  him  only  and  which  do  not  belong  to  any  other 
man  in  all  the  world.     This  man  while  he  never  seems 
humorous  to  himself  yet  is  always  humorous  to  everybody 
else.    Thus  Congreve  believes  that  humor  is  from  Nature. 
Parson  Adams's  characteristics  have  been  born  with  him. 
His  humor  is  not  a  picture  of  what  he  would  be,  if  he  were 
in  disguise.    He  is  life  and  not  an  affectation ;  nor  is  he  the 
portrayal  of  wit,  or  folly,  or  foible,  or  habit,  or  biliousness. 
He  is  quite  unconscious  of  the  idiosyncrasies  which  set  us 
into  a  roar  of  laughter.    He  is  human ;  for,  as  a  caricature, 
the  characteristics  are  not  so  pronounced  as  to  destroy 
the  species.    Parson  Adams  is  a  real  humorous  personality 
moved  about  by  Fielding  among  opposing  personages  so 
that  out  of  this  Parson's  honest  life  and  the  best  in  the 
onlooker's  there  arises  the  wholesome  detestation  of  the 
vices  of  the  assailing  puppets  that  elicit  laughter.    Abra- 
ham Adams  never  spoke  ill  of  anybody  in  all  his  trying 
situations.    He  seems  to  be  as  oblivious  of  others'  foibles 
as  of  his  own.     Thus,  in  looking  through  his  large  eyes, 
we  gain  a  larger  view  of  life,  and  have  more  respect  for 
Mrs.  Slipslop,  Lady  Booby,  Joseph,  and  Fanny  "who  can 
neither  read  nor  write,"  than  for  Parson  Trulliber  or  the 
lady  and  gentlemen  who  tried  to  keep  the  coach  door 
shut  against  Joseph  Andrews's  naked  body. 

Joseph  Andrews  and  Parson  Adams  are  a  means  by 
which  Fielding  makes  one  gaze  upon  the  naked  hypocriti- 
cal affectation  of  the  world.    Fielding  by  means  of  foot- 


102  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

pads  strips  •  Joseph  Andrews  to  the  skin  and  leaves  him 
lying. by  the  roadside.  Later  there  comes  along  a  stage- 
coacn  in' which  are  sitting  a  woman  and  many  so-called 
gentlemen,  one  of  whom  is  a  lawyer.  As  we  listen  to  their 
conversation  about  the  disposal  of  Joseph  Andrews,  who 
has  advanced  indelicately  toward  the  coach,  and  see  the 
woman's  face  behind  her  fan,  we  feel  assured  that  a 
frozen  corpse  will  be  the  result  of  the  hideous  situation,  but 
charity  in  this  world  comes  from  a  point  where  it  is  least 
expected.  In  this  case,  it  came  from  the  postilion  who 
had  sacked  a  henroost.  This  entire  scene  is  the  most 
typical  of  all  Fielding's  fiction,  since  it  is  big  with  hatred 
directed  against  conventional  morality  which,  according 
to  Henry  Fielding,  is  far  worse  than  the  immorality  and 
brutal  conduct  of  all  the  inmates  of  our  Newgates. 

In  passing  on  to  Tom  Jones  we  can  stop  for  a  few  seconds 
with  Jonathan  Wild  (1743)  to  state  that  it  is  a  melodram- 
atic display  of  the  world's  ruthless,  materialistic  great 
men  on  their  way  to  Newgate  (Hell) .  There  are  tears  to 
be  dropped  for  Jonathan  Wild  when  he  is  twitching  the 
corkscrew  from  the  sheriff's  pocket  to  show  us  how  a  great 
man  can  die  true  to  his  predatory  instincts.  The  tears 
fall,  if  we  grant  Fielding's  premise;  for  thus  in  this  world 
every  great  man,  whose  outer  success  has  been  attended 
by  a  corresponding  inner  contraction  of  the  soul,  must 
dance  on  air  to  the  tune  of  the  clink  of  the  corkscrew 
stolen  from  the  sheriff.  We  also  sigh  for  another  figure 
the  good  Heartfree  as  he  is  arrested  in  the  presence  of  his 
little  children.  When  the  officer  lays  hold  on  the  father, 
the  elder  daughter,  quitting  her  play  and  running  to  him 
and  bursting  into  tears,  cries  out,  "You  shall  not  hurt 
poor  papa.  "  She  is  a  little  pioneer  standing  on  the  border 
of  the  sable  land  of  the  sorrows  of  girlhood  pointing  to 
what  will  overtake  Dickens's  Little  Nell  and  De  Morgan's 
Lizarann  in  //  Never  Can  Happen  Again.    The  last  thing 


Fielding's  "Tom  Jones"  103 

Heartfree  does  before  going  to  answer  the  charge  of  felony 
is  tenderly  to  kiss  his  little  children.  As  minor  personages 
these  little  children  later  in  Amelia  will  receive  better 
characterization  within  the  scenes. 

In  Tom  Jones  (1749)  Fielding  achieved  high  comedy,  the 
plot  of  which  is  a  perfect  pattern  in  which  have  been 
woven  the  strands  of  human  experience.  Enthralling  are 
the  intrigues  and  adventures  that  befall  Tom  on  his  way 
to  London.  It  was  Blifil  who  caused  Tom's  flight,  and  it 
was  because  Sophia  Western  would  not  marry  Blifil  that 
she  at  length  ran  away  to  London.  As  one  sees  Jones 
moving  among  the  characters  of  high  society  and  carrying 
on  an  intrigue  with  Lady  Bellaston,  and  Sophia  being 
rescued  from  Lord  Fellamar,  the  agent  of  Lady  Bellaston 's 
plot,  by  her  father  the  good  squire  Western  who  had  come 
up  in  hot  haste  out  of  Somersetshire,  there  is  the  percep- 
tion of  a  change  in  the  English  novel  to  a  modern  tone. 
Fielding  has  knocked  over  the  candle  the  flames  of  which 
had  been  fed  by  Richardson's  never-ending  pile  of  letters 
and  presses  the  electric  button  of  modern  plot  contrivance. 
Thus  in  Tom  Jones  the  one  line  taken  by  Tom  and  the 
other  line  taken  by  Sophia  out  of  Somersetshire  cross  each 
other  in  the  house  of  Lady  Bellaston.  These  lines  cross 
and  blend  with  each  other  to  move  from  London  back 
again  to  pierce  the  centre  of  Blifil's  machinations.  No 
modern  novel  carries  within  its  structure  a  better  re- 
pressed culminating  climax.  All  through  the  pages  of  this 
wonderful  novel  the  readers'  constant  cry  is  "Who  is  this 
Tom?"  And  after  Fielding  has  taken  the  bandage  from 
their  eyes  and  they  think  that  they  see,  he  cleverly  re- 
places it  to  make  the  darkness  momentarily  greater  before 
revealing  the  true  facts  connected  with  the  birth  of  the 
hero. 

The  greatest  scene  in  Fielding's  high  comedy  of  1749  is 
the  play  within  the  play  wherein  Tom  and  Partridge  see 


104  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

David  Garrick  in  the  role  of  Hamlet.  As  we  think  of  the 
relation  of  Partridge  to  Garrick  and  the  ghost  and  hear 
Partridge  contemptuously  saying,  "He  the  best  player! 
Why  I  could  act  as  well  as  he  myself.  I  am  sure  if  I  should 
have  seen  a  ghost  I  would  have  looked  in  the  very  same 
manner  and  done  just  as  he  did,  "  there  is  the  provokement 
of  thoughtful  laughter.  In  Amelia  (1751)  there  is  very 
little  humor  except  that  contributed  by  Colonel  Bath, 
who  embraces  a  friend  one  minute  and  fights  with  him 
the  next.  In  Tom  Jones  there  had  been  very  little  of  the 
pathetic  except  the  craping  in  black  of  the  description  of 
the  beautiful  Sophia  Western  with  the  touching  sentence, 
"She  resembled  one  whose  image  never  can  depart  from 
my  heart.  "  Fielding  bestowed  upon  Sophia  all  the  graces 
of  Charlotte  Cradock,  his  first  wife,  whose  death  he  still 
mourned,  and  he  had  tenderly  named  her  in  the  invocation 
to  Book  XIII.  And  he  was  still  thinking  of  her  as  he  put 
Amelia  into  scenes  written  in  his  own  tears  and  in  ours. 
It  would  seem  as  if  Fielding,  aware  of  his  rapidly  approach- 
ing death,  felt  called  upon  to  give  to  the  world  as  a  parting 
gift  a  deeper  analysis  of  life's  sorrows  than  any  that  he 
hitherto  had  been  able  to  construct  and  in  1751  created  a 
high  tragi-comedy  full  of  domestic  woes. 

Amelia  was  written  by  a  man  whose  heart  was  big 
enough  to  recognize  that  "crimes,  they  are  human  errors 
and  signify  but  little;  nay,  perhaps  the  worse  a  man  is 
by  nature,  the  more  room  there  is  for  grace, "  and  that  "a 
good  heart  will  at  all  times  betray  the  best  head  in  the 
world.  "  In  observing  what  happens  to  Booth,  a  believer 
in  the  doctrines  of  passions,  there  is  sadly  taught  a  means 
whereby  any  one  may  be  enabled  to  "retrieve  the  ill 
consequences  of  a  foolish  conduct  and  by  struggling  man- 
fully with  distress  to  subdue  it,"  since  this  is  one  of  the 
noblest  efforts  of  wisdom  and  virtue.  Fielding,  under- 
standing that  "a  wicked  soul  is  the  greatest  object  of 


Fielding's  "Amelia"  105 

compassion  in  the  world,  "  creates  an  Amelia  as  a  redemp- 
tive agent ;  and  what  Fielding  had  of  ideal  love  in  his  first 
wife  he  gives  over  to  the  keeping  of  Booth  in  the  form  of 
Amelia,  who  constantly  shows  that  'there  is  no  crime  that 
a  woman  will  not  forgive  when  she  can  derive  it  from  love.' 
At  all  times  Amelia  gave  to  Booth  "a  caress  so  tender  that 
it  seemed  almost  to  balance  all  the  malice  of  his  fate." 
It  is  a  very  sad  picture  of  a  good  woman  training  her 
little  children  to  cling  to  the  love  of  one  good  person  who, 
if  he  is  not  to  be  found  on  earth,  can  be  found  in  the  One 
in  heaven.  These  little  folk  often  weep  for  their  mama, 
threatened  with  starvation,  and  there  is  no  pleasure  even 
at  Vauxhall  for  Amelia.  There  seems  to  be  no  happi- 
ness anywhere  for  her  by  reason  of  the  voice  of  the  siren 
Miss  Matthews  and  the  lure  of  the  gaming  table  which 
threatened  destruction  to  her  husband. 

Nothing  sadder  in  all  our  fiction  can  be  found  than  that 
pathos  which  depicts  Booth  rejecting  her  hard-earned 
feast  as  he  says,  "I  can't  sup  with  you  to-night";  and,  as 
he  staggers  away  into  the  gloom  to  meet  Miss  Matthews, 
his  healthy  little  children  try  to  comfort  their  mama. 
And  later  in  the  evening,  when  Booth  does  not  return  at 
the  promised  hour,  the  little  boy  cries  out,  "But  why  doth 
not  Papa  love  us?  I  am  sure  we  have  none  of  us  done 
anything  to  disoblige  him."  Fielding  considered  it  his 
business  "to  describe  human  nature  as  it  is,  not  as  we 
would  wish  it  to  be, "  and  clearly  shows  that  all  the  inci- 
dents tending  to  catastrophe  could  have  been  stopped  by 
Booth  at  any  time  if  he  had  sooner  grasped  at  "the  best 
of  all  things  which  is  innocence.  "  This  ability  of  stopping 
when  one  is  half  way  down  the  hill  of  perdition  "is  always 
within  thy  own  power;  and  though  fortune  may  make  thee 
often  unhappy,  she  can  never  make  thee  completely  and 
irreparably  miserable  without  thy  own  consent. "  Amelia 
by  her  irreproachable  qualities  of  virtue  at  last  conquers 


106  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  total  depravity  of  her  husband  and  takes  him  to  a 
country  estate  where  the  fascinations  of  the  world  no 
longer  can  touch  him.  "Art  and  industry,  chance  and 
friends,  have  often  relieved  the  most  distressed  circum- 
stances, and  converted  them  into  opulence,  "  says  Fielding. 
Then  the  reader  adds  this  can  indeed  happen  to  any  Booth 
if  he  possesses  an  Amelia.  The  high  tragi-comedy  vibrates 
to  the  tone  of  the  doctor's  voice  in  Macbeth.  "God,  God, 
forgive  us  all!"  as  Amelia  constantly  forgave  Booth. 

Fielding  was  aging  as  he  concluded  Amelia.  It  was  his 
last  great  view  of  this  sadly  mad  life  of  ours  mixed  with 
so  much  good  and  evil  for  little  folk  and  big  folk.  After 
passing  through  the  sable  land  of  Amelia  one  takes  down 
from  the  shelf  that  sadly  delightful  Journal  of  a  Voyage  to 
Lisbon  and  turns  to  the  entry  Wednesday,  June  16,  1754. 
' '  On  this  day  the  most  melancholy  sun  I  ever  beheld  arose 
and  found  me  awake  at  Fordhook,  "  and  reads  where  with 
death  in  his  heart  Fielding  has  written,  "at  twelve  pre- 
cisely my  coach  was  at  the  door  which  was  no  sooner  told 
me  than  I  kissed  my  children  round,  and  went  into  it  with 
some  little  resolution."  The  reader  then  sees  on  the  out- 
side of  Amelia  written  these  words,  " 'hie  finis  chartceqtie 
viceque,"  that  I  think  Fielding  gladly  wrote  as  an  accept- 
ance of  that  cure  which  was  so  soon  to  come  to  him  in 
the  Portuguese  city  on  the  hills,  that  cure  which  ends 
the  sad  mortalia — the  disintegration  of  our  friends  and  of 
ourselves. 

In  Amelia  there  are  incomparable  prison  scenes  such  as 
will  be  again  set  up  to  form  Fleet  for  Dickens's  Pickwick 
and  Thackeray's  Captain  Shandon,  the  caricature  in 
Pendennis  of  the  borrowing,  brilliant  William  Maginn,  the 
founder  of  Fraser's  Magazine  in  1830.  Shandon's  wife, 
who  is  always  forgiving  her  husband  seventy  times  seventy- 
seven,  with  her  child  Mary  depicted  as  praying  that  God 
bless  poor  spendthrift  drunken  papa,  is  Thackeray's  re- 


Fielding  and  Thackeray,  107 

creation  of  the  tender-hearted  Amelia.  In  Fielding's  last 
novel  is  noticeable  the  beginning  of  the  Vauxhall  vignettes. 
Amelia  can  not  enjoy  a  few  hours  in  the  Gardens  because 
sparks  as  roisterers  insult  her ;  and  within  a  year  after  the 
publication  of  Amelia  we  see  Arabella  in  the  same  locality 
jeered  at  by  the  rakes  in  Mrs.  Charlotte  Lennox's  The 
Female  Quixote  (1752).  Fanny  Bolton,  too,  in  Thackeray's 
Pendennis  (1849-50)  is  rescued  from  the  boorish  treatment 
at  Vauxhall  by  Pen;  and  one  remembers  that  Fanny 
Burney's  Evelina  in  1778  also  had  passed  through  Vaux- 
hall to  be  followed  by  Cecilia  in  1782. 

In  taking  farewell  of  Fielding  we  should  never  forget 
the  big  asides  that  present  themselves  at  the  beginning 
of  the  various  books  in  Tom  Jones;  for  these  will  in  time 
form  the  spacious  foyer  in  which  between  the  acts  Thack- 
eray will  tell  how  he  has  pulled  the  wires  of  his  puppets, 
and  how  we  ought  to  like  this  virtue  and  hate  that  vice.  It 
is  not  until  we  come  to  Fielding  that  the  action  of  narrative 
is  retarded  in  this  manner  on  so  large  a  scale.  In  final 
summary  then  we  can  say  that  Fielding  successfully 
moulded  for  the  English  novel  a  correct  form  of  atmos- 
phere, motivation,  and  characterization,  and  manufactured 
a  dialogue  that  characterizes  by  avoiding  the  method  of 
letting  things  get  cold  on  the  pages  of  a  report  as  was  the 
custom  of  Richardson.  Once  Richardson  succeeded  in 
making  reported  dialogue  as  vivid  as  if  it  were  going  on  in 
the  present  time  as  in  the  duel  of  words  between  Pamela 
and  Lady  Davers,  but  he  was  only  able  to  do  the  trick 
rarely.  It  was  Fielding  who  moved  English  fiction  for  the 
first  time  into  the  dramatic  touch  of  tone  that  made  great 
the  farce  and  low  comedy  in  Joseph  Andrews,  the  melo- 
drama in  Jonathan  Wild,  the  high  comedy  in  Tom  Jones, 
and  the  high  tragi-comedy  in  Amelia. 

One  year  after  the  publication  of  Jonathan  Wild  ap- 
peared The  Adventures  of  David  Simple  by  Sarah  Fielding, 


108  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  sister  of  the  great  Henry  who  contributed  a  most 
excellent  preface  to  the  book  when  it  came  out  in  its 
second  edition  in  1744.  The  central  character  of  the  novel 
is  the  boy  David  whose  home  life  has  been  darkened  by  a 
villainous  brother  and  a  mother-in-law  that  would  have 
been  a  fit  wife  for  a  Jonathan  Wild.  Upon  the  death  of  his 
father,  David  finds  that  his  brother  has  nefariously  suc- 
ceeded to  the  estate  and  with  a  mind  misanthropically 
inclined  starts  out  on  his  journey  in  the  world  in  search  of 
a  real  friend.  In  the  peregrinations  in  London  David 
finds  none  at  the  Royal  Exchange,  none  in  Fleet  Street, 
or  in  the  Strand,  or  in  Covent  Garden,  or  at  the  Pall 
Mall.  Everything  in  these  localities  seems  to  be  spattered 
over  with  deceit.  There  is  nothing  but  misery  at  whist 
tables ;  pseudo-culture  is  rampant  at  all  literary  conversa- 
tions ;  and  criticism,  as  he  sees  it  at  the  taverns,  is  inspired 
by  the  animus  of  spleen.  All  London  life  in  the  coffee- 
houses and  at  St.  James's  Park  is  veneer  and  varnish,  but 
at  last  David  learns  that  human  nature,  bad  as  it  is  in 
little  meannesses,  should  be  trusted  and  pins  his  whole 
faith  to  the  lovable  Camilla,  the  good  Cynthia,  and  the 
true  Valentine. 

Shakespeare  is  writ  large  in  this  little  masterpiece. 
This  was  the  opinion  of  Henry  Fielding;  and,  we  are  sure 
that  he  is  right  in  his  judgment,  when  we  examine  the 
pages  which  are  padded  full  of  aphorisms  satirically  thrust 
into  our  hearts,  the  firstlings  of  which  are  our  friends. 
According  to  Sarah  Fielding  the  whole  species  of  mankind 
would  be  happy  if  they  were  "contented  to  exert  their 
own  faculties  for  the  common  good,  neither  envying  those 
who  in  any  respect  have  a  superiority  over  them,  nor 
despising  such  as  they  think  their  inferiors."  The  novel 
ends  with  the  good  which  is  to  be  found  in  human  nature 
which  Sarah's  big  brother  never  failed  to  find  in  his  great 
world  of  rascality.    The  main  action  of  the  plot  is  tech- 


Sarah  Fielding's  "David  Simple"      109 

nically  marred  by  the  insertion  of  four  inset  stories :  the 
history  of  Cynthia;  the  history  of  Camilla;  the  history  of 
Isabelle;  and  Cynthia's  story  of  Corinna.  The  third 
story  told  by  Isabelle  is  a  composite  containing  the  sub- 
story  of  the  Marquis  de  Stainville  and  that  of  Chevalier 
Dumont.  Thus,  along  with  the  general  story  as  told  by 
Sarah  Fielding,  we  have  four  stories  constantly  to  carry 
in  our  minds.  But  in  spite  of  the  glut  of  inset  tales  which 
spoil  plot,  we  are  compelled  to  see  that  what  is  actually 
best  in  delicacy  of  characterization  has  been  attained  by 
Sarah  Fielding  in  the  inset  story  portraying  Dumont  in 
the  tragic  snare  set  for  his  innocence.  Isabelle's  tale  of 
Dorimene,  the  wife  of  the  Marquis  de  Stainville,  morbidly 
in  love  with  Dumont  and  plotting  the  murder  of  Isabelle 
to  keep  her  from  marrying  Dumont,  is  a  vast  improvement 
on  the  Leonora-Horatio  story,  in  Joseph  Andrews  (1742), 
which  could  have  suggested  to  Smollett  the  insertion  of  the 
episode  relating  to  Miss  Williams  in  Roderick  Random 
(1748).  Sarah  Fielding's  cluster  of  inset  stories  might 
have  encouraged  her  brother  to  put  the  Man  of  the  Hill 
in  Tom  Jones  (1749).  And  Smollett  was  just  as  fond  of  a 
story  within  a  story  as  Henry  Fielding  or  his  sister  Sarah. 
In  Roderick  Random  the  history  of  Miss  Williams  which 
is  interrupted  to  give  us  a  glimpse  of  the  interior  of  the 
Marshalsea  (with  which  we  are  to  become  better  acquainted 
later  when  we  see  Roderick  Random  there  for  bilking  his 
tailor  and  see  in  it  the  dove-girl  Little  Dorrit  in  Dickens) 
ties  us  to  Fielding  by  forecasting  Miss  Matthews  in 
Amelia  (1751)  a  more  finished  portraiture  of  the  courte- 
san. The  flogging  of  Smollett's  Mr.  Syntax  by  Lieutenant 
Tom  Bowling,  aided  by  Roderick  and  Strap,  foreshadows 
the  thrashing  of  Dickens's  Squeers  by  Nicholas  Nickleby 
and  the  clearing  of  Dotheboys  Hall  in  1838.  The  school- 
teacher had  appeared  before  1748  in  English  fiction  in  the 
shape  of  him  who  was  stabbed  with  a  bodkin  through 


no  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  bowels  by  Robert  the  Devil,  and  in  the  form  of  the 
pedagogue  that  George  A  Green  flung  over  his  head  to  be 
damaged  by  a  somersault.  Mr.  Syntax  appears  again  as 
Mr.  Vindex  in  Henry  Brooke's  The  Fool  of  Quality  (1766) 
with  a  pin  piercing  the  pivotal  centre  of  his  extremities. 
Smollett  gave  an  impetus  to  the  creation  of  the  school 
life  appearing  in  Frank  Coventry's  Pompey  the  Little 
(1751).  In  Smollett's  atmosphere  bacchanalian  students 
go  in  and  out  of  Oxford  University  in  Godwin's  Fleetwood 
(1805);  and  its  pressure  is  felt  in  Godwin's  Mandeville 
(18 1 7),  when  the  boys  of  Winchester  College  so  unjustly 
treat  the  hero  as  to  aid  in  the  subsequent  dethronement 
of  his  reason,  and  in  Lockhart's  Reginald  Dalton  (1823)  in 
which  Reginald  because  of  his  escapades  is  expelled  from 
Oxford.  Smollett's  work  in  the  schoolroom  helped  depict 
the  experiences  of  Jane  Eyre  at  Lowood  and  the  treatment 
the  pedagogue  received  at  the  hands  of  the  boys  led  by 
Steerforth  in  David  Copper  field  (1850).  It  also  aided  in 
portraying  what  went  on  at  the  pension  at  Brussels  in 
Charlotte  Bronte's  Villette  (1853),  and  helped  to  make  the 
excellent  cross-section  of  Oxford  University  life  in  Cuth- 
bert  Bede's  (Rev.  Edward  Bradley's)  Mr.  Verdant  Green 
(1857).  And  the  shadow  of  Smollett's  schoolroom  fell 
upon  Thomas  Hughes's  Tom  Brown's  School  Days  (1857) 
and  upon  John  Ridd's  big  fight  at  school  in  Blackmore's 
Lorna  Doone  (1869). 

The  sea-fighting  in  Nat  Ingelo's  Bentivolio  and  Urania, 
and  the  overhauling  of  boats  by  Captain  Singleton  and 
Quaker  William  Walters  as  portrayed  by  Defoe,  helped 
to  make  big  the  seafaring  life  that  is  so  finely  put  on  in 
Roderick  Random.  It  was  such  naval  work  that  prepares 
us  for  Lieutenant  Jack  Bunce's  overtaking  the  brig  in  the 
sloop,  Fortune's  Favorite,  in  Scott's  The  Pirate  (1822). 
Smollett's  Lieutenant  Tom  Bowling  helped  Cooper  in 
The  Pilot  (1823)  create  the  fascinating  Long  Tom  Coffin; 


Smollett's  " Peregrine  Pickle"  in 

and  old  salt  Bowling  in  his  yawing  on  the  ocean  wave 
to  foreign  countries  made  possible  Michael  Scott's  Tom 
Cringle  s  Log  (1829),  The  Cruise  of  the  Midge  (1834),  and 
the  exciting  episodes  contained  in  the  novels  of  Frederick 
Marry  at.  Another  thing  to  be  noted  in  Roderick  Random 
is  that  in  the  study  of  the  hero,  who  is  bandied  around  the 
world  like  a  tennis  ball,  or  like  a  Barry  Lyndon  hazarding 
everything  on  card-game  throws  in  life,  Smollett  empha- 
sizes that  the  truest  university  for  enlarging  the  under- 
standing is  that  of  adversity.  This  is  an  idea  that 
Goldsmith  will  make  much  of  in  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
(1766) ;  and  Strap  faithful  in  his  dirt  and  tears  to  his  mas- 
ter Roderick  is  the  forerunner  of  Fielding's  Partridge  and 
Amory's  John  Buncle's  O'Fin.  Strap  endears  himself  to 
our  hearts;  and  when,  on  the  way  to  London  at  the  inn  he 
is  frightened  at  the  raven  and  its  owner  the  insane  old 
man,  somehow  the  bird  and  the  idiot  boy  in  Dickens's 
Barnaby  Rudge  come  to  mind,  for  Dickens  in  his  youth 
was  very  fond  of  Smollett's  fiction. 

The  most  striking  scene  in  the  Adventures  of  Peregrine 
Pickle  (1751)  consists  in  the  coming  of  Commodore 
Trunnion,  Lieutenant  Hatchway,  and  the  boatswain's 
mate  Tom  Pipes  to  the  Inn.  This  striking  introduction 
of  three  eccentric  seamen  is  similar  to  the  way  in  which  the 
old  scarred-cheeked,  red-nosed  pirate,  with  treasure-chest 
on  wheel-barrow,  comes  to  the  old  Admiral  Benbow  Inn  in 
Treasure  Island  to  take  command  of  its  inmates.  Com- 
modore Trunnion  with  a  patch  on  his  eye,  Lieutenant 
Hatchway  with  his  wooden  leg,  and  the  boatswain's  mate 
Tom  Pipes,  must  have  been  running  in  the  mind  of 
Stevenson  as  he  portrayed  the  old  rum-drunken,  nose- 
blowing  seaman,  on  whom  was  the  print  of  Flint's  fist, 
eternally  piping  up  his  "Fifteen  men  on  the  dead  man's 
chest, "  the  horrid  blind  man  Pew,  with  a  green  shade  on 
his  eye,  tapping  with  that  dreadful  stick  of  his,  and  the 


ii2  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

bland,  smiling,  obsequious,  one-legged  Captain  Silver  so 
agile  on  and  with  his  crutches. 

So  saying  he  (Trunnion)  lifted  up  one  of  his  crutches  intend- 
ing to  lay  it  gently  across  Mr.  Hatchway's  pate;  but  Jack,  with 
great  agility,  tilted  up  his  wooden  leg  with  which  he  warded 
off  the  blow,  to  the  no  small  admiration  of  Mr.  Pickle,  and 
utter  astonishment  of  the  landlord,  who,  by-the-bye,  had 
expressed  the  same  amazement  at  the  same  feat,  at  the  same 
hour,  every  night  for  three  months  before. 

The  description  of  the  memorable  ride  of  Commodore 
Trunnion  to  the  church  he  never  reached  to  be  married  to 
Mrs.  Grizzle,  the  possessor  of  the  virago-like  qualities  of 
Richardson's  Lady  Davers  and  the  temperament  of  Mrs. 
Tabitha  Bramble  in  Humphry  Clinker,  and  the  great 
characterization  that  is  given  him  when  he  at  last  comes 
to  port  will  always  make  him  stand  out  as  a  masterpiece 
in  caricature.  But  after  the  death  of  the  Commodore  the 
succeeding  incidents  fail  to  hold  our  interest.  Smollett 
straightway  asks  us  to  study  the  stressed  digressions  of  a 
long  inset  story  The  Memoirs  of  a  Lady  of  Quality  which 
is  nothing  but  the  history  of  Miss  Williams  done  over 
again.  The  fit  of  ennui  seems  to  pass  away  as  we  come 
upon  Peregrine  imprisoned  in  Fleet,  for  there  is  the  reali- 
zation that  what  Dickens's  Pickwick  was  to  see  is  all  pre- 
figured. The  ways  and  doings  and  goings-on  of  Fleet 
prison  are  all  unfolded.  Then  we  are  called  upon  to 
marvel  at  Emilia  as  she  adroitly  keeps  Peregrine  from 
becoming  a  successful  Lovelace.  But  the  yawn  of  weari- 
ness returns  as  we  are  compelled  to  step  in  the  tracks  of 
Peregrine  in  his  wanderings  and  be  relieved  only  by  listen- 
ing to  the  coarse  humor  of  Pipes  as  he  shouts,  "  I'll  be 
d— n'd  if  I  do"  and  by  hearing  the  thump  of  Hatchway's 
wooden  leg.     All  this  is  but  the  further  accentuation  of 


Smollett's  "Count  Fathom"  113 

our  disgust  with  an  ad  nauseum  method  of  writing  fiction 
to  the  point  of  tedious  tenuity. 

Smollett  in  the  Adventures  of  Ferdinand,  Count  Fathom 
(1753)  presents  the  problem  of  heredity  in  the  study  of 
Ferdinand,  the  son  of  an  English  woman  a  vivandiere  in 
the  army  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough's  who  was  killed 
in  the  act  of  robbing  a  corpse.  This  maternal  predatory 
instinct  guided  the  son  into  avenues  of  great  villainy.  As 
a  soldier  in  Alsace,  Ferdinand  stumbled  into  French 
service  from  which  by  a  ruse  he  succeeded  in  getting 
himself  honorably  discharged  for  the  purpose  of  visiting 
Paris.  As  he  continued  on  the  road  he  suddenly  discovered 
that  he  had  been  fleeced  by  the  wily  Tyroleze  of  all  the 
jewels  which  they  together  had  taken  from  their  dupes. 
In  spite  of  this  setback  Ferdinand  continued  his  journey 
on  horseback  until  at  nightfall  in  the  midst  of  lightning, 
thunder,  and  rain,  in  a  dense  forest  he  brings  his  horse 
to  a  standstill  at  the  door  of  a  lone  cottage,  into  which  he 
is  admitted  by  a  withered  Hecate.  And  the  nocturnal 
adventure  which  followed  is  not  equaled  in  Gothic  mag- 
nificence until  we  come  to  Gerard  by  means  of  phosphor- 
escent La  Mort  escaping  death  from  the  outlaws  in  the 
road  house  in  Charles  Reade's  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth. 
Such  a  scene  of  Smollett's  not  only  harks  back  to  Thomas 
Deloney's  Thomas  Cole,  "the  next  fat  pig, "  at  the  mercy 
of  his  inn-keeperess  at  Colebrooke,  but  it  is  also  a  near 
forward  cry  to  the  auburn-tressed  Mary  in  the  hands  of 
the  banditti  in  the  ruined  abbey  through  which  are  seen 
vivid  flashes  of  lightning  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  Castles  of 
Athlin  and  Dunbayne  (1789) ;  to  the  vault  of  the  brigands 
in  A  Sicilian  Tale  (1790);  and  to  the  beldame  flourishing 
the  glittering  knife  at  Geraldine  Verney,  who  is  rescued 
at  the  critical  moment  by  Desmond  from  the  fierce  out- 
laws of  Auvergne  in  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith's  Desmond 
(1792). 


ii4  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

In  The  Expedition  of  Humphry  Clinker  (1771)  we  see 
Matthew  Bramble,  age  fifty-five,  in  company  with  his 
vinegar-faced    sister   Tabitha,    age   forty-five,    his   niece 
Lydia   Melford,    his   nephew   Jery   Melford,    his   sister's 
attendant-woman  Winifred  Jenkins,  and  Tabitha's  filthy 
Newfoundland  cur  Chowder  afflicted  with  dropsy.     We 
are  at  once  fascinated  with  genial  Mat  who  is  a  lineal 
descendant  of  Parson  Adams,  Uncle  Toby,  Dr.  Primrose, 
and   Henry   Brooke's   Mr.   Fenton.      Matthew   Bramble 
passes  on  the  legacy  of  a  tender  heart  to  Bulwer-Lytton's 
Captain  Roland  Caxton  and  Thackeray's  Colonel  New- 
come;  and  in  the  study  of  Tabitha  there  is  a  link  action 
between  Mrs.   Grizzle  and  Becky  Sharp,   whose  lighter 
counterpart  is  Trollope's  Lizzie  Eustace  in  The  Eustace 
Diamonds  (1872).    Even  the  dog  Chowder  barks  his  way 
to  the  pug  in  Susan  E.  Ferrier's  Marriage  (18 18),  to  Dora's 
Jip  in  Dickens's  David  Copperfield,  and  to  the  only  friend 
Bill   Sikes   had.     After  leaving   London   the   Brambles 
journeyed  northward  to  York  and  Scarborough.     They 
crossed  the  Tees  at  Stockton  and  at  Durham  met  the 
disputatious  Lismahago.    Tabitha  unmasked  her  powerful 
batteries  concentrating  an  awful  fire  upon  the  citadel  of 
his  heart.    It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  Commodore  Trunn- 
ion had  safely  passed  through  all  the  horrors  of  battles 
on  sea,  and  that  Lieutenant  Lismahago  had  suffered  all 
kinds  of  barbarous  Indian  tortures  on  land,  but  neither 
could  escape  from  his  Becky  Sharp.     As  Mrs.   Grizzle 
gladly  took  all  that  was  left  of  Hawser  Trunnion  so  Mrs. 
Tabitha  eagerly  lassoed  the  remnant  of  a  hero  that  had 
been  the  dainty  morsel  relinquished  by  the  squaw  Squin- 
kinacoosta.     Another  thing  to  be  noticed  is  that  surely 
Washington    Irving   went   all   the   way   to   Durham   to 
observe  the  dramatic  harmony  existing  between  Obadiah 
Lismahago  and  his  horse,  "a  resurrection  of  dry  bones," 
before  describing  Ichabod  Crane  on   Gunpowder;   and 


Smollett's  Caricature  Work  115 

possibly  Smollett,  seeing  Dr.  Primrose  in  prison  preaching 
to  the  felons,  decided  to  give  such  an  experience  to  Clinker 
in  Clerkenwell. 

By  the  wealth  of  caricature  work  bestowed  on  the 
Welshman  Morgan  in  Roderick  Random  (1748)  and  on  the 
Caledonian  Lismahago  in  Humphry  Clinker  (1771)  Smol- 
lett shows  a  retroaction  to  Fielding's  Englishman  Jonathan 
Wild  (Walpole?)  of  1743.  Smollett  is  superior  to  Richard- 
son and  Fielding  in  moving  the  muscles  of  the  mouth  to 
unholy  laughter.  There  are  smudge  fires  burning  all  over 
the  field  of  his  fiction  obscuring  true  characterization,  as 
when  Uncle  Mat,  intoxicated  by  these  noxious  vapors, 
is  seen  falling  in  a  dead  faint  to  the  floor  in  a  pump-hall 
at  Bath.  Amid  the  exhalations  arising  from  this  smudge- 
field  at  midnight  a  Lismahago  in  pyrotechnic  display  is 
seen  descending  a  ladder  to  be  rescued  at  the  foot  by  his 
inamorata  Tabitha;  and  a  Winifred  Jenkins  is  rescued 
from  a  fire  in  a  similar  manner  by  Humphry  Clinker.  All 
of  these  individuals  go  from  the  fire  to  the  smother  of 
marriage  in  Smollett's  greatest  novel,  in  which  the 
machinery  of  all  this  coarseness  of  caricature  is  seen  to 
contain  the  same  cogs  which  caught  certain  characters 
such  as  Fielding's  Joseph  Andrews  and  Parson  Adams  and 
tore  their  clothes  off.  This  salad  of  Smollett's  broad 
caricature  however  was  necessary  so  that  Thomas  Love 
Peacock  could  pepper  it  so  as  to  make  it  a  seasonable 
dish,  which  would  further  be  made  palatable  for  English 
readers  by  Disraeli,  Dickens,  and  Thackeray. 

Before  we  leave  Tobias  Smollett,  who  was  the  peer  of 
any  of  his  contemporaries,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  he 
drew  finer  lines  on  a  more  extensive  scale  than  any  pre- 
decessor or  contemporary  had  done  on  the  cosmopolite 
map  of  the  world,  and  adorned  his  fiction  here  and  there 
with  scenic  work  that  was  destined  to  make  beautiful  the 
filigree  slides  of  quickly  moved  transitional  bits  of  scenery 


n6  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  novels.  We  must  remember  that 
Thomas  Amory  in  1756  had  taken  his  John  Buncle  to 
Harrigate  and  Scarborough  to  appreciate  the  natural 
beauties  of  these  northern  watering  places;  and  Smollett's 
southern  Bath  scenes  move  one  on  through  certain  pages 
of  Graves's  Spiritual  Quixote  (1772)  to  where  these  will 
live  forever  in  the  vivisection  given  them  by  Jane  Austen. 
And  not  only  has  Smollett  enriched  English  fiction  with 
miniature  photographs  of  the  external  world,  but  with 
minute  descriptions  of  interior  accessories  that  help 
readers  to  visualize  so  as  to  dispel  the  vague  and  illusive 
Indian  summer  haze  hanging  over  this  kind  of  work  in  the 
fiction  of  his  great  contemporaries.  In  Humphry  Clinker 
Smollett  occasionally  has  adorned  his  pages  with  excellent 
examples  of  out-of-door  and  indoor  pictures,  such  as 
Matthew  Bramble's  portrayal  of  Loch  Lomond  and  Jery 
Melford's  description  of  the  great  hall  in  Dougal  Camp- 
bell's habitation  in  Argyleshire  and  of  the  breakfast  he 
partook  therein. 

I  have  seen  the  Laga  di  Garda,  Albano,  De  Vico,  Bolsena, 
and  Geneva,  and,  upon  my  honour,  I  prefer  Lough-Lomond 
to  them  all ;  a  preference  which  is  certainly  owing  to  the  verdant 
islands  that  seem  to  float  upon  its  surface,  affording  the  most 
inchanting  objects  of  repose  to  the  excursive  view.  Nor  are 
the  banks  destitute  of  beauties,  which  even  partake  of  the 
sublime.  On  this  side  they  display  a  sweet  variety  of  wood- 
land corn-field,  and  pasture,  with  several  agreeable  villas 
emerging  as  it  were  out  of  the  lake,  till,  at  some  distance,  the 
prospect  terminates  in  huge  mountains  covered  with  heath, 
which,  being  in  the  bloom,  affords  a  very  rich  covering  of 
purple.  Everything  here  is  romantic  beyond  imagination.  .  .  . 
What  say  you  to  a  natural  basin  of  pure  water,  near  thirty 
miles  long,  and  some  places  seven  miles  broad,  and  in  many 
above  a  hundred  fathoms  deep,  having  four  and  twenty 
habitable  islands,  some  of  them  stocked  with  deer,  and  all  of 


Smollett's  "Humphry  Clinker"         117 

them  covered  with  wood;  containing  immense  quantities  of 
delicious  fish,  salmon,  pike,  trout,  perch,  flounders,  eels,  and 
powans,  the  last  a  delicate  kind  of  fresh  water  herring  peculiar 
to  this  lake;  and  finally,  communicating  with  the  sea,  by 
sending  off  the  Leven,  through  which  all  those  species  (except 
the  powan)  make  their  exit  and  entrance  occasionally?  .  .  . 
There  is  an  idea  of  truth  in  an  agreeable  landscape  taken 
from  nature,  which  pleases  me  more  than  the  gayest  fiction, 
which  the  most  luxuriant  fancy  can  display. 

Our  landlord's  house-keeping  is  equally  rough  and  hospit- 
able and  favours  much  of  the  simplicity  of  ancient  times :  the 
great  hall,  paved  with  flat  stones,  is  above  forty-five  feet,  by 
twenty-two,  and  serves  not  only  for  a  dining-room,  but  also 
a  bed-chamber  to  gentlemen-dependents  and  hangers  on  of 
the  family.  At  night,  half  a  dozen  occasional  beds  are  ranged 
on  each  side  along  the  wall.  These  are  made  of  fresh  heath, 
pulled  up  by  the  roots,  and  disposed  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  make  a  very  agreeable  couch,  where  they  lie,  without  any 
other  covering  than  the  plaid — My  uncle  and  I  were  indulged 
with  separate  chambers  and  down-beds,  which  we  begged 
to  exchange  for  a  layer  of  heath;  and,  indeed,  I  never  slept  so 
much  to  my  satisfaction.  It  was  not  only  soft  and  elastic, 
but  the  plant  being  in  flower,  diffused  an  agreeable  fragrance, 
which  is  wonderfully  refreshing  and  restorative. 


The  following  articles  formed  our  morning's  repast:  one  kit 
of  boiled  eggs;  a  second,  full  of  butter;  a  third,  full  of  cream; 
an  entire  cheese,  made  of  goat's  milk;  a  large  earthern  pot  full 
of  honey;  the  best  part  of  a  ham;  a  cold  venison  pasty;  a 
bushel  of  oat-meal,  made  in  thin  cakes  and  bannocks,  with  a 
small  wheaten  loaf  in  the  middle  for  the  strangers;  a  large 
stone  bottle  full  of  whisky,  another  of  brandy,  and  a  kilder- 
kin of  ale.  There  was  a  ladle  chained  to  the  cream  kit,  with 
curious  wooden  bickers,  to  be  filled  from  this  reservoir.  The 
spirits  were  drank  out  of  a  silver  quaff,  and  the  ale  out  of 
horns:  great  justice  was  done  to  the  collation  by  the  guests  in 


n8  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

general ;  one  of  them  in  particular  ate  above  two  dozen  of  hard 
eggs,  with  a  proportionable  quantity  of  bread,  butter,  and 
honey ;  nor  was  one  drop  of  liquor  left  upon  the  board. 

But  Smollett's  greatest  gift  to  our  fiction  was  that 
caricature  work  which  made  Michael  Scott  in  Tom  Cringle's 
Log  (1829)  mention  Trunnion  and  when  relating  about 
Carthagena  exclaim,  "but  all  this  sort  of  thing,  is  it  not 
written  in  Roderick  Random?"  Certainly  when  creating 
Tom  Cringle  and  Obed,  the  Yankee  seaman  who  had 
turned  pirate,  Michael  Scott  had  his  eye  on  Roderick 
Random  and  Commodore  Trunnion,  Hatchway,  Pipes, 
and  Obadiah  Lismahago;  and  Pickwick,  Quilp,  Pecksniff, 
Captain  Cuttle,  Micawber,  Heep,  and  Skimpole,  created 
between  1836  and  1853,  never  would  have  been  so  farci- 
cally and  humorously  fine  if  Dickens  had  not  in  his  youth 
chuckled  over  the  caricatures  created  by  Smollett. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Robert    PaltocK,    CKarlotte    Lennox,  Thomas 
Amory,   and  Laurence  Sterne 

WHILE  the  great  triumvirate  Richardson,  Field- 
ing, and  Smollett,  were  producing  masterpieces 
Robert  Paltock  in  minor  fiction  penned  The 
Life  and  Adventures  of  Peter  Wilkins,  a  Cornish  Man 
(1751),  which  is  reminiscent  of  Robinson  Crusoe  and 
Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels,  and  which  runs  back  beyond 
the  Yahoos,  Houyhnhnms,  the  Flying  Island  in  The 
Voyage  to  Laputa,  Brobdingnagians,  Lilliputians,  and 
Defoe's  cannibals,  to  Bacon's  New  Atlantis  where  aerial 
navigation  is  seen  as  a  blessing  to  mankind.  Paltock's 
style  is  unusually  pleasurable  as  Peter  Wilkins  on  the 
island  takes  the  flying  beauty  Youwarkee,  adorned  with 
her  whale-boned,  hair-colored  silk  garment,  into  his  grotto 
to  make  her  his  wife;  and  it  is  not  at  all  surprising  that 
his  Youwarkee  should  have  appealed  to  Charles  Lamb, 
Scott,  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  that  Robert  Southey  should 
have  gone  to  her  to  obtain  his  beautiful  conception  of 
the  angel  Ereenia,  of  the  Glendoveers,  who  carries  Kailyal 
to  the  grove  of  Casyapa,  the  sire  of  the  gods,  in  The  Curse 
of  Kehama. 

Vivid  is  Paltock's  description  of  how  Wilkins  crept 
down  to  the  verge  of  the  wood  to  gaze  upon  the  lake,  the 
bridge,  and  the  boats  from  which  over  the  waters  came 

119 


120  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

undulating  the  sound  of  merry  speech  and  laughter. 
Wilkins  marvels  at  the  disappearance  of  the  fleet  and  at 
the  sudden  flight  of  the  happy  creatures  in  a  long  train 
down  the  length  of  the  lake.  As  Crusoe  was  aghast  at  the 
footprint  on  the  shore  so  was  Peter  Wilkins  at  the  presence 
of  spirits  on  the  island  of  Graundevolet ;  and,  Crusoe-like, 
Wilkins  in  his  grotto  falls  back  for  deliverance  upon 
prayer  to  an  Almighty  Power.  That  night  his  prayer  was 
answered  in  the  form  of  a  soothing  dream  in  which  it 
seemed  as  if  he  were  back  in  Cornwall  for  a  moment  to 
gain  knowledge  of  the  death  of  his  wife  Patty  who,  before 
dying,  had  told  her  aunt  to  tell  her  husband,  if  ever  he 
should  return,  that  she  had  only  gone  to  the  lake,  where  he 
could  find  her.  As  Peter  in  his  dream  ran  to  find  her  at 
the  lake  he  seemed  to  hear  these  words:  "Whither  so  fast, 
Peter?  I  am  your  wife,  your  Patty."  And  as  he  was 
clasping  the  most  beautiful  creature  to  his  breast  the 
dream  ceased  and  he  awoke.  Then  Almighty  Providence 
sends  Youwarkee  to  Wilkins  as  if  to  fulfil  the  desire  of  his 

dream. 

i 

...  I  then  heard  a  sort  of  shriek,  and  a  rustle  near  the 
door  of  my  apartment;  all  which  seemed  very  terrible.  But 
I,  having  before  determined  to  see  what  and  who  it  was,  reso- 
lutely opened  my  door  and  leaped  out.  I  saw  nobody;  all  was 
quite  silent,  and  nothing  that  I  could  perceive  but  my  own 
fears  a-moving.  I  went  then  softly  to  the  corner  of  the  building, 
and  there,  looking  down  by  the  glimmer  of  my  lamp,  which 
stood  in  the  window,  I  saw  something  in  human  shape  lying 
at  my  feet.  I  gave  the  word,  "Who  is  there?"  Still  no  one 
answered.  My  heart  was  ready  to  force  a  way  through  my 
side.  I  was  for  a  while  fixed  to  the  earth  like  a  statue.  At 
length,  recovering,  I  stepped  in,  fetched  my  lamp,  and,  re- 
turning, saw  the  very  beautiful  face  my  Patty  appeared  under 
in  my  dream;  and  not  considering  that  it  was  only  a  dream,  I 
verily  thought  I  had  my  Patty  before  me,  but  she  seemed  to 


Paltock's  " Peter  Wilkins"  121 

be  stone  dead.  Upon  viewing  her  other  parts  (  for  I  had  never 
yet  removed  my  eyes  from  her  face) ,  I  found  she  had  a  sort  of 
brown  chaplet,  like  lace  round  her  head,  under  and  about 
which  her  hair  was  tucked  up  and  turned;  and  she  seemed  to 
me  to  be  clothed  in  a  thin  hair-coloured  silk  garment,  which, 
upon  trying  to  raise  her,  I  found  to  be  quite  warm,  and 
therefore  hoped  there  was  life  in  the  body  it  contained.  I 
then  took  her  into  my  arms,  and  treading  backwards  with 
her,  I  put  out  my  lamp;  however,  having  her  in  my  arms 
I  conveyed  her  through  the  doorway  in  the  dark  to  my 
grotto.  Here  I  laid  her  upon  my  bed,  and  then  ran  out  for 
my  lamp. 

"This,"  thinks  I,  "is  an  amazing  adventure.  How  could 
Patty  come  here,  and  dressed  in  silk  and  whalebone  too? 
Sure  that  is  not  the  reigning  fashion  in  England  now?  But 
my  dream  said  she  was  dead.  Why,  truly,"  says  I,  "so  she 
seems  to  be.  But  be  it  so,  she  is  warm.  Whether  this  is 
the  place  for  persons  to  inhabit  after  death  or  not,  I  can't 
tell  (for  I  see  there  are  people  here,  though  I  don't  know 
them);  but  be  it  as  it  will,  she  feels  as  flesh  and  blood;  and 
if  I  can  but  bring  her  to  stir  and  act  again  as  my  wife,  what 
matters  it  to  me  what  she  is  ?  it  will  be  a  great  blessing  and 
comfort  to  me;  for  she  never  would  have  come  to  this  very 
spot  but  for  my  good." 


I  then  spoke  to  her,  and  asked  divers  questions,  as  if  she  had 
really  been  Patty,  and  understood  me;  in  return  of  which, 
she  uttered  a  language  I  had  no  idea  of,  though  in  the  most 
musical  tone,  and  with  the  sweetest  accent  I  ever  heard.  It 
grieved  me  I  could  not  understand  her.  However,  thinking 
she  might  like  to  be  on  her  feet,  I  went  to  lift  her  off  the  bed, 
when  she  felt  to  my  touch  in  the  oddest  manner  imaginable; 
for,  while  in  one  respect  it  was  as  though  she  had  been  cased 
up  in  whalebone,  it  was  at  the  same  time  as  soft  and  warm  as 
if  she  had  been  naked. 

It  is  in  the  inspired  essay  on  Christ's  Hospital  Five-and- 


122  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Thirty   Years  Ago  that  Charles  Lamb  extols  Paltock's 
story : 

We  had  classics  of  our  own,  without  being  withholden  to 
"insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome,"  that  passed  current 
among  us — Peter  Wilkins — the  Adventures  of  the  Hon.  Capt. 
Robert  Boyle — the  Fortunate  Blue  Coat  Boy — and  the  like. 

In  Mrs.  Charlotte  Lennox's  The  Female  Quixote  (1752), 
the  delightful  Lady  Arabella,  a  monomaniac  on  the  sub- 
ject of  romance,  talks  in  episodes  of  Greek  and  Roman 
history  and  proclaims  that  no  man  can  possess  her  hand 
until  he  has  wooed  her  for  ten  years  with  all  the  witchery 
of  incidents  contained  in  Sidney's  Arcadia  and  the  volumes 
of  Madeleine  de  Scudery.  In  1751,  Fielding  had  given  a 
charming  vignette  of  the  gentle  Amelia  at  Vauxhall ;  and, 
in  the  last  part  of  her  novel,  Mrs.  Lennox  humorously 
portrays  Arabella  in  Spring  Gardens  playing  the  romantic 
role  of  a  heroine  attempting  to  rescue  a  distressed  drunken 
courtesan,  disguised  in  a  suit  of  boy's  clothes,  from  the  city 
rakes. 

"Oh  Heavens!"  cried  Arabella,  "this  must  certainly  be  a 
very  notable  adventure.  The  lady  has  doubtless  some  extra- 
ordinary circumstances  in  her  story,  and  haply  upon  enquiry, 
her  misfortunes  will  be  found  to  resemble  those  which  obliged 
the  beautiful  Aspasia  to  put  on  the  same  disguise,  who  was  by 
that  means  murdered  by  the  cruel  Zenodorus  in  a  fit  of  jealousy 
at  the  amity  his  wife  expressed  for  her.  But  can  I  see  this 
unfortunate  fair  one,"  added  she,  pressing  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Glanville's  intreaties  through  the  crowd — "I  may  haply  be 
able  to  afford  her  some  consolation. " 

Afterwards  Arabella  continues  to  make  a  fool  of  herself 
over  the  lovely  unknown,  in  front  of  whom  the  swords 
of  two  roisterers  are  crossed  for  possession,  and  refuses 
to  be  comforted  by  her  lover  Mr.  Glanville  who,  bitterly 


Mrs.  Lennox's  "The  Female  Quixote"  123 

regretting  he  had  ever  carried  her  to  the  gardens,  tells  her 
that  the  common  girl  has  been  rescued  by  her  favorite  lover. 

"But  are  you  sure,"  said  Arabella,  "it  was  not  some  other 
of  her  ravishers  who  carried  her  away,  and  not  the  person 
whom  she  has  haply  favoured  with  her  affection?  May  not 
the  same  thing  have  happened  to  her,  as  did  to  the  beautiful 
Candace,  Queen  of  Ethiopia;  who,  while  two  of  her  ravishers 
were  fighting  for  her,  a  third  whom  she  took  for  her  de- 
liverer came  and  carried  her  away. "...  "If  she  went  away 
willingly  with  him,  .  .  .  'tis  probable  it  may  not  be  another 
ravisher:  and  yet  if  this  person  that  rescued  her  happened 
to  be  in  armour,  and  the  visor  of  his  helmet  down,  she  might 
be  mistaken  as  well  as  Queen  Candace. " 

Then  Arabella  begins  to  doubt  Glanville  because  he  had 
been  loth  to  spring  to  the  incognita's  aid.  Perhaps  he  at 
some  point  in  his  career  might  have  met  this  pretty  girl 
and  therefore  had  weighty  reasons  for  his  heartless 
conduct.  After  acting  thus  to  the  mortification  of  Mr. 
Glanville  and  later,  after  plunging  into  the  Thames 
"intending  to  swim  over  it,  as  Clelia  did  the  Tyber," 
she  awakens  from  her  romantic  dreams,  which  had  led 
to  ridicule  and  sufferings  in  Bath,  London,  and  Richmond, 
to  accept  his  love  in  a  world  of  sanity.  This  Arabella 
points  all  the  way  to  Catherine  Morland  emerging  from 
the  mists  of  murder  in  romance  in  Jane  Austen's  North- 
anger  Abbey  (18 18),  and  bears  some  resemblance  to  Miss 
Cherry  Wilkinson  (Cherubina  de  Willoughby)  in  Eaton 
Barrett's  The  Heroine  (18 13). 

The  other  novels  of  Mrs.  Charlotte  Lennox  are  The  Life 
of  Harriet  Stuart  (1751) ;  Henrietta  (1758);  Sophia  (1762); 
Euphemia  (1790),  and  The  History  of  Sir  George  Warring- 
ton, or  the  Political  Quixote  (1797).  These  novels  scarcely 
deserve  recognition;  Euphemia,  however,  shows  that  Mrs. 
Lennox  was  influenced  by  the  fiction  of  Henry  Mackenzie, 


124  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Thomas  Holcroft,  and  Robert  Bage.  She  pictures  a  new 
Arcadia  in  the  wilderness  of  military  life  at  Albany, 
Schenectady,  and  at  the  other  forts  and  posts  on  the 
frontier  in  America.  Respectable  Indians  glide  before  us 
in  the  forest  and  in  camp.  Their  virtues  are  extolled  as 
tears  are  seen  in  the  eyes  of  the  savage  old  Mohawk  when 
he  politely  expressed  his  grief  to  Mrs.  Bellenden  for  the 
death  of  the  great  White  Chief,  the  late  Commandant. 
Also  Indians  on  snowshoes  help  frame  a  picture  of  the  tra- 
gedy of  being  ' '  snowed-in ' '  in  the  wilds  near  Schenectady. 

The  Life  of  John  Buncle,  Esq.  (1756-66)  was  written  by 
Thomas  Amory,  in  all  probability  a  native  of  Ireland 
who,  at  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  first  volume, 
was  thirty-two  years  of  age.  This  young  man,  possibly  a 
doctor  of  medicine,  destined  to  live  until  ninety-seven 
years  of  age,  was  a  scholar  and  an  omnivorous  reader 
of  books  in  every  field  of  human  knowledge.  Amory 
(Buncle),  if  one  judge  from  his  novel  which,  in  my  opinion, 
is  largely  autobiographic,  fascinated  by  Locke's  Essay  on 
the  Human  Understanding,  fond  of  mathematics  as  William 
De  Morgan's  father,  partial  to  Amadis  de  Gaul  and  Mrs. 
Behn's  Oroonoko  and  Agnes  de  Castro,  was  as  eccentric  in 
his  writings  as  Laurence  Sterne,  and  in  depicting  a  Protes- 
tant girl  under  the  thumbscrews  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
husband  as  bitter  against  Catholicism  and  as  enamored 
of  the  gipsy  life  and  of  winds  blowing  over  lonely  moors 
and  links  as  George  Borrow  the  author  of  Romany  Rye 
and  Lavengro. 

John  Buncle,  after  leaving  Trinity  College,  University  of 
Dublin,  quarrels  with  his  father,  who  opposed  Unitarian 
tenets,  and  with  his  mother-in-law  who  desired  that  her 
nephew  should  supplant  him  in  the  family.  It  is  religion 
that  drives  him  out  a  wanderer  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
and  Buncle,  in  this  respect,  is  a  forerunner  of  Richard 
Graves's  Geoffry  Wildgoose,  graduate  of  Oxford,  trying 


Amory's  "John  Buncle"  125 

to  find  fixity  of  religious  faith  in  evangelic  Methodism. 
After  passing  through  the  grandeur  of  a  storm  at  sea, 
Buncle  finds  himself  upon  English  soil  in  Stainmore, 
Westmoreland,  where  he  gazes  upon  scenery  surpassing 
the  Alps  and  Apennines.  As  he  listens  to  Mr.  Price's 
story,  the  reader  gathers  that  Price  is  the  glimmer  of 
Charlotte  Bronte's  Rochester,  because  having  had  ex- 
periences in  Paris  with  the  demimonde,  he  had  returned 
to  marry  a  plain,  honest  woman,  who  reformed  and  con- 
formed him.  Buncle  likes  to  describe  a  thunder-storm 
in  the  mountains,  and  a  water-fall  that  can  be  compared 
to  a  Niagara.  He  becomes  enraptured  with  "sweet  rural 
scenes, "  and  contributes  a  dissertation  on  the  beauties  of 
nature,  clearly  demonstrating  that  such  tend  to  help  man 
in  conforming  to  reform,  and  cites  an  example  in  the  case 
of  a  certain  John  Orton.  Life  is  analyzed  as  all  vanity 
except  as  it  is  practised  in  the  virtue  of  charity.  In 
Yorkshire  there  is  a  hunting  scene  in  which  is  seen  Juliet 
Berrisfort,  resembling  Scott's  Di  Vernon,  losing  her  heart 
to  John.  In  the  activity  of  his  married  life  Buncle  always 
keeps  to  the  centre  of  the  wilds  of  Westmoreland  at  Orton 
Lodge;  and,  when  ever  he  wishes  a  skeleton  to  be  a 
memento  mori  of  connubial  bliss,  there  is  always  one 
happily  presented.  When  he  does  not  find  grinning  bones, 
he  finds  a  good  country  girl  with  a  little  more  money. 
John  is  very  fond  of  describing  just  what  kind  of  trees 
are  on  his  estate  and  just  what  varieties  of  flowers  are 
in  the  neighborhood  of  his  bower.  And  he  is  not  a  bad 
botanist  when  he  shows  us  the  jessamine,  honeysuckle, 
purple  bistorta,  acanthus,  aconus,  white  cacalia,  blue 
campanula,  cassia,  the  double  daisy,  crimson  dianthus, 
and  the  red  fruximella.  He  fairly  revels  in  the  pretty 
rock-rose,  the  cassine,  the  sea-green  coromilla,  woodbine, 
sweet  briar,  and  violets.  In  paying  close  attention  to  the 
details    of    landscape    omitting    no    minute    accessories 


126  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Amory  is  almost  the  equal  of  Smollett.  Buncle  meets  six 
Irish  gentlemen  that  are  fond  of  love  and  a  bottle.  One  of 
these  Gallaspy  is  a  prototype  of  any  one  of  the  unfortunate 
masters  of  Maria  Edgeworth's  Castle  Rackrent.  The 
reader  runs  across  Eliza  Hunt  as  pitiable  an  object  as  the 
fallen  woman  Martha  in  David  Copperfield.  Buncle  is 
fond  of  health  resorts ;  therefore  he  can  not  tell  us  enough 
about  Harrigate,  Oldfield  Spa,  and  the  famous  Knares- 
borough  dropping- well. 

Things  are  well  modernized  in  this  novel.  Miss  Spence, 
John's  sweetheart,  died  because  of  the  ignorance  of  four 
learned  physicians.  When  this  happened,  he  married 
Miss  Turner.  The  reader  sees  Miss  Dunk  buried  alive; 
he  sees  Carola  Bennet,  a  fallen  woman,  rehabilitating 
herself  by  marriage  and  the  beauties  of  nature.  It  is 
certainly  a  region  of  miraculous  occurrences.  In  this 
marital  district  violent  death  is  hard  to  escape.  If  small- 
pox spares  one,  a  more  dreadful  pest  seems  to  take  its 
place.  Dr.  Stanvil  is  done  to  death  by  the  explosion  of 
his  stomach;  and,  all  at  once,  by  this  convenient  happen- 
ing, his  wife  discloses  herself  as  the  reanimated  corpse  of 
Miss  Dunk,  so  that  she  can  fall  into  the  arms  of  John 
Buncle  as  his  seventh  wife.  But  alas!  John  can  not  hold 
her  long,  because  she  is  wrested  from  his  arms  by  the 
destined  dreaded  disease  smallpox.  Perhaps  the  most 
wonderful  occurrence  in  the  novel  is  the  conversion  of 
Buncle's  father,  who  had  come  to  detest  the  Athanasian 
creed  and  accept  Unitarianism  because  of  his  eccentric 
son's  written  remarks  of  genius  jotted  down  in  a  manu- 
script. The  whole  novel  in  its  crotchet,  digressive  method 
is  precursory  of  Sterne's  Tristram  Shandy.  Thomas 
Amory  has  a  place  among  such  literary  eccentrics  as 
James  I  of  England,  George  Wither,  Thomas  Day,  Wil- 
liam Beckford,  Crabbe  Robinson,  Douglas  Jerrold,  Charles 
Lamb,  and  Walter  Savage  Landor.     And  this  crotchety 


Sterne's  "Tristram  Shandy"  127 

Amory  appealed  to  eccentric  Lamb  who  in  The  Two  Races  of 

Men  says: 

Here  stood  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  in  sober  state. — 
There  loitered  the  Complete  Angler;  quiet  as  in  life,  by  some 
stream  side. — In  yonder  nook,  John  Buncle,  a  widower- 
volume,  with  "eyes  closed, "  mourns  his  ravished  mate. 

Laurence  Sterne  has  indeed  beguiled  us  of  our  pain  and 
has  created  the  smile,  adding  something  to  "this  fragment 
of  life,"  as  we  listen  to  Uncle  Toby  whistling  his  Lilli- 
bullero  and  see  his  character  leisurely  unfolding  itself 
day  by  day  here  and  there  throughout  Tristram  Shandy 
(1759-67).  Parson  Adams  has  become  the  man  who 
would  scarcely  "retaliate  upon  a  fly, "  who  is  the  type  of 
an  honest  man  "with  as  good  and  as  upright  heart  as  ever 
God  created."  Uncle  Toby  can  not  appear  too  often 
"in  his  old  fringed  chair  with  his  chin  resting  upon  his 
crutch,"  or  gaze  too  often  at  his  collection  of  books  on 
military  architecture,  or  speak  too  often  to  Corporal 
Trim,  ' '  'T  would  be  a  pity,  Trim,  thou  shouldst  ever  feel 
sorrow  of  thy  own, — thou  feelest  it  so  tenderly  for  others." 
The  death  of  Le  Fevre,  the  poor  army  officer,  who  died  in 
an  inn  near  the  Shandy  home,  and  the  tender  sympathy 
bestowed  by  Toby  on  Le  Fevre's  son  form  pathetic  scenes 
as  genuine  as  those  humorous  ones  presenting  Toby  and 
Trim  from  day  to  day  following  and  carrying  out  the 
Duke  of  Marlborough's  campaigns  on  bowling-green  and 
in  garden.  Sterne  saves  his  best  salable  sentimentalism 
for  Maria  and  her  goat,  and  continues  it  in  his  farewell 
taken  of  her  in  Sentimental  Journey  (1768);  but  in  the 
underlying  sadness  of  the  Maria  story,  one  never  quite 
loses  the  flavor  of  the  genuine  pathos  of  Le  Fevre's  which 
pervades  it  all,  just  as  it  permeates  that  episode  in  Senti- 
mental Journey  in  which  the  well-known  starling  from  the 


128  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

wires  of  its  Bastille  says  to  all  heart-broken  men  and 
women,  "I  can't  get  out. "  In  1766  tender-hearted  twins 
were  born,  namely,  Goldsmith's  Vicar  and  Henry  Brooke's 
Mr.  Fenton  (Mr.  Clinton,  uncle  of  Harry  Clinton).  These 
philanthropic  gentlemen  afterwards  introduced  their  old 
kinsmen  Parson  Adams  and  Uncle  Toby  to  Matthew 
Bramble  and  Uncle  Roland  Caxton,  so  that  all  might 
unite  in  throwing  the  richly  embroidered  mantle  of  their 
perfections  around  the  shoulders  of  Colonel  Newcome. 
It  was  in  1849  that  the  reincarnation  of  Sterne  occurred 
most  strikingly  when  The  Caxtons  of  Bulwer-Lytton  was 
published.  Le  Fevre  and  his  son  became  Captain  Roland 
and  his  boy.  Maria  and  her  goat  were  re-embodied  in  the 
smiling  Savoyard  and  the  white  mice,  which  danced  on 
the  hurdy-gurdy  suspended  over  a  grave.  In  The  Caxtons 
Uncle  Roland  with  his  cork  leg  and  his  younger  brother 
Augustine  Caxton  possess  all  the  charming  idiosyncrasies 
of  Sterne's  Uncle  Toby. 

In  Tristram  Shandy,  after  perusing  the  campaigns  of 
Toby  and  Trim,  the  death  of  Le  Fevre,  the  pathetic 
Maria  story,  and  the  Cervantic  amours  that  Toby  has 
with  Mrs.  Wadman,  the  reader  is  much  exasperated  as 
Sterne  forces  him  to  sit  down  to  feast  elsewhere  amid  the 
nine  books.  As  a  banqueter  he  sees  the  waiters  of  poor 
plotting,  hobby-horse  crotchet  characterization,  and  over- 
strained sentiment,  setting  before  him  black  dishes  in 
which  are  salmagundi-chapters  on  knots,  on  whiskers,  on 
wishes,  on  noses,  on  sash-windows,  on  an  ass-nibbled 
macaroon,  and  on  Toby's  modesty.  There  is  a  proper 
protest  on  the  part  of  a  guest  against  such  tidbits,  for 
these  are  the  "sallets"  that  Sterne  has  thrust  into  the 
lines  "to  make  the  matter  savoury."  Sterne  reminds  his 
auditors  that  he  is  not  in  a  hurry ;  and  no  reader,  who  is 
in  a  hurry,  should  ever  be  given  Tristram  Shandy.  Sterne 
throughout  his  work  is  continually  giving  Carlylean  gasps 


Sterne's  Uncle  Toby  129 

of  sensibility.  He  has  a  very  sane  view  of  life  when  he  is  in 
such  moods.  He  shows  that  man  languishes  under  wounds 
that  he  has  the  power  to  heal,  that  reason  simply  sharpens 
his  sensibilities,  multiplies  his  pains,  and  makes  out  of 
him  a  melancholy  Hamlet;  and,  as  a  character  antithetical 
to  the  pessimistic  Dane  ("for  O!  for  O!  the  hobby-horse 
is  forgot"),  Sterne  makes  step  from  this  hobby-horse  a 
man  who  has  an  elastic  structure  within  that  can  counter- 
balance the  evil  of  the  universe.  Toby's  conscience  is  the 
secret  spring  of  a  well-ordered  machine  that  by  means  of 
religion  combatively  beats  back  chronic  troubles  that 
come  in  like  ghosts  to  bother  the  modern  Hamlet  on  the 
barren  promontory  of  life.  Toby  set  upon  himself  the 
imperative  duty  of  digging  a  trench  in  his  garden  just  as 
under  the  sense  of  military  duty  he  had  dug  a  trench  at 
Namur.  And  the  broad  smile  of  optimism  is  just  as  broad 
in  the  former  capacity  as  it  had  been  in  the  latter.  Life 
is  the  religion  of  resignation.  If  one  does  his  duty,  then 
God  will  not  inquire  whether  it  has  been  done  in  a  red 
coat  or  a  black.  A  naked  sword  bequeathed  by  a  valiant, 
poverty-stricken  father  is  all  the  patrimony  a  young 
knight  needs — if  he  will  only  wield  it — in  this  beautiful, 
sad  world  of  fairy-land. 

All  the  malignant,  eldritch,  faun-eyed  elves  burst  forth 
from  their  confines  to  cajole  the  pen  of  Sterne  when  he  did 
not  trust  to  God  to  guide  it  in  sequence;  but,  when  Provi- 
dence seizes  the  pen,  we  never  get  away  from  the  shadow 
cast  by  poor  Lieutenant  Le  Fevre's  regimental  coat,  on 
which  is  written,  "the  best  hearts  are  ever  the  bravest." 
Sometimes  these  dark  sprites  seem  to  sting  the  hand  of 
Providence  so  that  it  swings  the  pen  into  an  ironic  jab 
that  tries  to  kill  the  English  starling  because  it  ought  to 
have  been  taught  to  say,  "I  can  get  in"  to  the  Bastille  of 
English  political  preferment.  In  playful  trick  this  pen 
works  a  suspense  structure  for  the  Le  Fevre  story:  it 


130  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

describes  the  circle  around  the  fire  and  scratches  a  place 
for  us  to  sit  down  to  listen  to  the  tale  that  apparently 
never  is  to  be  completed;  but,  for  our  sakes,  sorrowing 
Providence  seizes  the  pen  and  inscribes  satisfactory  climac- 
tic lines  of  sincerity  (or  insincerity  as  some  think)  in  a 
sentiment  that  reaches  back  of  Richardson  to  Steele. 
Sterne  says,  "Shall  I  go  on? — No,"  when  Le  Fevre  dies; 
and  Steele  says,  "I  can't  go  on,"  when  Philander  and 
Chloe  are  to  be  burned  to  a  cinder  in  the  theatre  in  The 
Tatler.  Does  Sterne  in  the  death  of  Le  Fevre  feel  his 
pathos  as  Steele  did  in  his  short  story?  For  my  part  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  Sterne  does.  Sometimes  we 
feel  as  if  afrits  were  responsible  for  raising  the  sirocco  that 
blows  almost  imperceptibly  about  Uncle  Toby's  charac- 
terization to  make  it  relax  into  satiric  caricature.  Some- 
times, especially  when  Toby  is  working  his  buccinatory 
cheek  muscles  and  the  orbicular  muscles  around  his  lips, 
and  counting  on  his  fingers  Mrs.  Wadman's  virtues,  we 
think  of  the  same  kind  of  fretwork  bestowed  by  Pea- 
cock in  Nightmare  Abbey  on  Scythrop  (the  caricature  of 
Shelley),  as  he  dejectedly  sits  with  his  finger  on  his  nose 
pondering  over  his  dual  love  exposure.  In  spite  of  this 
occasional  slight  touch  of  caricature  Toby  emerges  from  his 
clouds  of  tobacco  smoke  so  triumphant  in  characterization 
that  one  involuntarily  breaks  out  into  the  exclamation, 
"O,  Toby!  in  what  corner  of  the  world  shall  I  seek  thy 
fellow?"  Upon  closing  Tristram  Shandy,  one  is  sure  that 
it  will  swim  down  the  gutter  of  time  along  with  Swift's 
Tale  of  a  Tub,  and  past  it  to  take  a  permanent  place  with 
the  greatest  novels  that  exist.    As  Sterne  says: 

I  will  not  argue  the  matter:  time  wastes  too  fast:  every 
letter  I  trace  tells  me  with  what  rapidity  life  follows  my  pen; 
the  days  and  hours  of  it,  more  precious,  my  dear  Jenny!  than 
the  rubies  about  thy  neck,  are  flying  over  our  heads  like 


Sterne,  Thackeray,  and  Bulwer         131 

clouds  of  a  windy  day,  never  to  return  more — everything 
presses  on — whilst  thou  art  twisting  that  lock, — see!  it  grows 
grey;  and  every  time  I  kiss  thy  hand  to  bid  adieu,  and  every 
absence  that  follows  it,  are  preludes  to  that  eternal  separation 
which  we  are  shortly  to  make. — Heaven  have  mercy  upon  us 
both! 

And  when  one  closes  the  Sentimental  Journey  with  De 
Quincey-like  veneration  for  an  apostrophe  he  recites : 

Dear  sensibility!  source  inexhausted  of  all  that  is  precious 
in  our  joys,  or  costly  in  our  sorrows !  Thou  chainest  thy  martyr 
down  upon  his  bed  of  straw — and  it  is  thou  that  liftest  him 
up  to  heaven. — Eternal  Fountain  of  our  feeling! — 'Tis  here 
I  trace  thee — "and  this  is  thy  divinity  which  stirs  within  me.'' 

And  it  was  Sterne  that  kicked  over  the  vase  from  which 
crept  the  genius  of  sensibility  enveloped  in  clouds  equally 
distributed  of  sincerity  and  insincerity.  Subsequent 
writers  of  English  fiction  have  had  their  pages  smoked 
by  these  clouds,  but  the  genius  crept  back  always  to 
remain  in  Sterne's  vase.  Mackenzie  tried  to  steal  the 
vase,  but  the  clouds  that  chased  him  are  simply  the  clouds 
of  insincerity  and  they  well-nigh  choked  him  to  death. 
The  vase  still  is  puffing  its  clouds  on  the  shore  by  the  sea 
of  tears;  and  many  have  tried  to  kick  the  vase  into  the 
sea,  but  it  is  fixed  there  by  adamantine  chains,  and  the 
clouds  above  it  reach  to  the  heavens  and  the  savors  thereof 
are  acceptable  to  the  nostrils  of  Ahriman  and  Ormuzd. 
Thackeray  in  On  a  Peal  of  Bells  says : 

Yonder  lean,  shambling,  cadaverous  lad,  who  is  always 
borrowing  money,  telling  lies,  leering  after  the  housemaids, 
is  Master  Laurence  Sterne — a  bishop's  grandson,  and  himself 
intended  for  the  Church;  for  shame,  you  little  reprobate! 
But  what  a  genius  the  fellow  has!  Let  him  have  a  sound 
flogging,  and  as  soon  as  the  young  scamp  is  out  of  the  whipping- 


132  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

room  give  him  a  gold  medal.  Such  would  be  my  practice  if 
I  were  Doctor  Birch,  and  master  of  the  school; 

and,  in  De  Finibus,  he  said: 

What  if  some  writer  should  appear  who  can  write  so  en- 
chantingly  that  he  shall  be  able  to  call  into  actual  life  the 
people  whom  he  invents? 

Thereupon  Thackeray  names  some  of  the  great  charac- 
ters in  fiction  that  he  wishes  could  step  in  at  the  open 
window  by  the  garden.  And  as  these  imaginatively  line 
up  for  his  inspection,  he  expresses  no  permanent  satisfac- 
tion with  the  fancied  formation  until  there  are  seen  ad- 
vancing to  join  it 

dearest  Amelia  Booth  {leaning)  on  Uncle  Toby's  arm;  .  .  . 
the  Gil  Bias  troop;  and  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley ;  and  the  greatest 
of  all  crazy  gentlemen,  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha,  with  his 
blessed  squire.  I  say  to  you,  I  look  rather  wistfully  towards 
the  window,  musing  upon  these  people.  Were  any  of  them  to 
enter,  I  think  I  should  not  be  very  much  frightened.  Dear  old 
friends,  what  pleasant  hours  I  have  had  with  them!  We  do 
not  see  each  other  very  often,  but  when  we  do,  we  are  ever 
happy  to  meet. 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  I  can  see  leaning  on  Uncle 
Toby's  other  arm — not  a  tender-hearted  woman,  but  the 
composite  of  Fielding's  Parson  Adams,  Goldsmith's  Dr. 
Primrose,  Brooke's  Uncle  Fenton,  and  Smollett's  Uncle 
Matthew  Bramble — Colonel  Thomas  Newcome  behind 
whom  is  standing  in  the  shadow  Captain  Roland  Caxton, 
with  one  hand  on  his  cork  leg,  as  if  to  remind  us  that,  if 
Uncle  Toby  wTas  wounded  at  the  siege  of  Namur,  he  had 
been  maimed  at  Waterloo,  and  the  other  hand  on  the 
sword  that  he  is  sheathing  in  his  tear-blistered  Bible. 


CHAPTER  V 

Samuel  Johnson,  CHarles  JoHnstone,  John 
Hawhesworth,  Frances  Broohe,  Horace 
Walpole,  Oliver  GoldsmitK,  Henry  BrooKe, 
Henry  Mackenzie,  RAcHard  Graves,  and 
Clara  Reeve 

IT  was  in  the  year  of  the  creation  of  Tristram  Shandy 
that  Rasselas  and  his  sister  Nekayah,  longing  "to 
see  the  miseries  of  the  world,  since  the  sight  of  them 
is  necessary  to  happiness,"  in  the  company  of  the  poet 
Imlac,  escaped  from  their  valley  to  find  ideal  happiness. 
On  their  journey  they  find  that  perseverance  rather  than 
strength  makes  for  happiness;  that  living  next  to  nature 
is  not  happiness;  that  "retiring  from  exercise  of  virtue 
does  not  mean  happiness";  and  that  life  is  largely  sour 
grapes,  for  each  person  is  trying  to  get  what  he  thinks  the 
other  has.  Out  in  the  world  they  find  that  "much  is  to  be 
endured  and  little  to  be  enjoyed";  and  that  "knowledge 
is  nothing  until  it  is  communicated."  The  task  at  one 
time  becomes  so  difficult  that  a  division  of  labor  is  neces- 
sary. Rasselas  searches  for  joy  amid  the  splendor  of 
courts  and  Nekayah  pursues  the  will-o'-the-wisp  in  the 
shades  of  humbler  life.  The  prince  and  princess  find  only 
misery  in  their  search;  and  they  increase  this  misery  by 
taking  different  points  of  view  in  a  controversy  as  to 
whether  marriage  or  celibacy  promotes  greater  happiness. 
The  querulous,  cocksure  note  sounded  by  each  as  the 
argument  advances  shows  how  innately  selfish  all  of  us  are 

133 


134  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  maintaining  our  own  views  as  being  always  right  and 
never  wrong.  Thus  constituted  as  we  are,  how  dare  we 
even  define  happiness  when  our  definition  of  it  may  mean 
utmost  misery  to  others.  Even  Imlac  is  forced  to  analyze 
the  poet  as  one  who  can  not  be  happy  since  his  heaven  is  to 
be  given  him  by  posterity.  If,  however,  we  were  compelled 
to  be  one  of  the  three,  we  would  certainly  choose  to  be 
Imlac  who  easily  carries  the  honor  of  the  chief  charac- 
terization in  the  novel.  We  would  be  Imlac  because  he  is 
the  creator  of  images  that  make  the  poet  the  least  un- 
happy of  mortals,  and  because  the  poet  helps  redeem 
humanity  by  giving  to  it  the  highest  form  of  art.  The 
nearest  that  the  reader  comes  to  solving  the  riddle  of 
human  happiness  is  when  he  sees  the  three  at  last  meeting 
the  mad  astronomer  and  the  old  sage.  Into  the  humorous 
characterization  of  the  astronomer  there  is  thrown  the 
pathos  of  Johnson's  own  half-mad  existence;  and  in  the 
painful  words  of  the  old  sage,  who  had  found  quasi- 
happiness  in  the  philosophy  that  looks  through  death, 
Johnson  bespeaks  his  own  life-long  unhappiness  that  had 
just  dipped  itself  into  deeper  darkness  by  depriving  him  of 
a  mother.  "I  have  neither  mother  to  be  delighted  with 
the  reputation  of  her  son,  nor  wife  to  partake  of  the  honors 
of  her  husband.  I  have  outlived  my  friends  and  my  rivals. ' ' 
"There  is  a  pleasure,  sure,/  In  being  mad,  which  none 
but  mad  men  know";  and  so  far  as  Dryden's  utterance 
rings  true,  the  mad  astronomer  is  happy,  since  he  believes 
that  he  has  given  an  ' '  impartial  dividend  of  rain  and 
sunshine"  to  the  nations  of  the  earth;  and  as  one  sees  him 
unhappily  happy  in  his  visionary  schemes,  which  were  to 
be  worked  out  for  the  benefit  of  humanity,  he  is  almost 
ready  to  believe  with  Johnson  that  all  men  are  as  mad  as 
the  astronomer  and  as  sadly  happy.  This  astronomer  is 
an  idealist  in  an  unreal  and  real  world;  and,  like  Rostand's 
Chantecler,  the  illusionist  thoroughly  believes  that  he  can 


Johnstone's  "Chrysal"  135 

make  dappled  dawn  appear  by  the  mad  crowings  with 
which  the  sun  comes  up  every  day  to  scatter  the  clouds 
full  of  miseries  threatening  mankind.  The  great  Cham  of 
literature  warns  us  not  to  be  pheasant-hens  in  our  attitude 
toward  this  Chantecler.  We  should  not  laugh  at  the  mad 
astronomer  as  did  the  pheasant-hens, — Nekayah  and 
Pekuah.  We  must  hug  our  illusions  (lap  up  the  stars  in 
the  night  time)  since  they  are  the  only  actual  bits  of 
happiness  that  life  contains.  Johnson  would  have  no  one 
destroy  these  illusions,  since  we  are  all  in  a  sense  mad 
astronomers,  lapping  up  the  stars;  and,  if  we  are  not  mad 
star-and-sun  gazers,  we  can  only  remain  miserable  until 
we  find  ourselves  in  that  sage  state,  where  we  can  have  a 
confident  belief  in  a  hope  that  happiness  can  be  found  in 
a  life  beyond  the  grave.  Though  illusions  are  shattered 
we  are  always  to  remain  idealists,  believing  that  things 
might  have  been  worse  and  that  man's  discontent  has 
created  everything  worth  while  that  we  cherish.  Thus 
Johnson,  in  his  contemplation  of  the  problem  of  happiness, 
gave  to  humanity  that  hope  which  lies  behind  the  silver 
clouds  at  the  end  of  the  long,  hollow  valley  of  Bagdad  in 
The  Vision  of  Mirza.  In  the  orientalization  of  the  novel, 
Johnson  carries  the  reader  on  to  Dr.  Hawkesworth's 
Almoran  and  Harriet  (1761)  to  make  consummate  such 
atmosphere  in  William  Beckford's  Vathek  (1786). 

The  body  of  Charles  Johnstone's  Chrysal,  or  the  Ad- 
ventures of  a  Guinea  (1760-65)  is  malodorous  scandal 
connected  with  the  orgies  of  Medmenham  Abbey,  and  its 
perusal  is  a  bath  in  Smollettian  smut;  but  the  birth  of 
Chrysal  from  the  flame  in  the  vase  of  gold  is  graphically 
described,  and  interesting  indeed  is  Traffic,  the  plunger, 
who,  contrary  to  the  dying  injunction  of  his  father  "to 
wrong  no  individual  and  defraud  no  public,"  is  seen 
scheming  the  financial  ruin  of  Amelia  whom  he  had 
promised  to  marry.     Amelia  throws  him  into  Chancery 


136  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  goes  to  Jamaica.  Traffic  pursues,  and  there  is  con- 
demned by  her  own  words  in  open  court  to  dig  out  in 
the  mines  what  had  dug  his  own  ruin.  Chrysal,  the 
female  of  the  soul,  presiding  over  memory  to  sting  to 
sadness  any  bit  of  happiness  in  the  life  of  the  individual, 
is  the  soul  of  the  piece  of  gold  which  from  the  hand  of 
unhappy  Traffic  had  been  thrown  into  the  vessel,  that 
drew  it  up  from  the  bottom  of  the  mine  so  that  it  could 
have  adventures  in  the  world  as  a  guinea.  The  adventures 
of  this  guinea  after  its  transfer  from  Jamaica  to  England 
as  it  passed  from  miser  to  author,  to  general's  gentleman, 
to  a  celebrated  female,  etc.,  are  after  the  manner  of  Addi- 
son's "  Adventures  of  a  Shilling  "  in  The  Taller  (1710)  and 
the  adventures  of  the  dog  in  Coventry's  Pompey  the 
Little  (1751).1  Such  a  method  of  satirizing  society  can  be 
traced  back  to  John  Taylor's  A  Shilling,  or  the  Trauiles  of 
Twelvepence  (1622). 

During  the  same  year  that  Mrs.  Frances  Sheridan 
portrayed  the  much  afflicted  heroine  Sydney  Biddulph, 
crying  out  in  her  innocence  under  the  pressure  of  Richard- 
sonian  thumbscrews,  was  published  John  Hawkesworth's 
Almoran  and  Hamet,  an  Oriental  Tale  (1761).  It  is  very 
hard  for  a  snake  to  remain  a  snake  when,  by  changing  itself 
into  a  dove,  it  can  more  covertly  carry  its  designs  into 

1  G.  H.  Rodwell's  Memoirs  of  an  Umbrella  (1846)  is  a  nineteenth-century 
return  to  Johnstone's  Chrysal.  An  umbrella  tells  the  tragi-comic  experi- 
ences arising  out  of  its  being  transferred  from  one  person  to  another.  The 
plot  centres  round  Mr.  Stutters,  who  after  an  absence  of  many  years  in 
India  returns  to  establish  himself  as  Mr.  Quickly,  to  find  his  lawful  daugh- 
ter Ellen,  and  to  right  all  wrongs;  but  we  are  more  interested  in  following 
the  fortunes  of  the  villain,  whom  Rodwell  averred  no  reader  wanted  to  be. 
This  character  Herbert  Trevillian,  the  handsomest  man  in  London,  by  his 
cruel  treatment  of  Alice  finds  his  Nemesis  in  Bedlam  posing  as  an  Adonis 
before  a  bit  of  broken  mirror  and  later  receives  proper  burial  in  the  grounds 
of  a  private  asylum  with  one  female  for  a  mourner.  The  novel  is  filled  with 
caricature  work  reminiscent  of  Dickens  and  the  Gothic,  that  is  prevalent  in 
Bulwer;  and  its  most  interesting  pages  are  those  which  Phiz  (Browne) 
decorated  with  sixty-eight  engravings. 


Hawkesworth's  "Almoran  and  Hamet,,    137 

effect.  Such  a  serpent  was  the  Persian  Almoran  who,  in 
order  to  gain  the  Circassian  beauty  Almeida,  by  the  power 
of  the  talisman  changed  himself  into  the  form  of  his 
brother  the  good  Hamet,  whom  she  loved,  and  transformed 
Hamet  into  the  likeness  of  himself.  The  sixteen-year-old 
Almeida  is  subjected  to  two  attacks  from  evil  at  the  height 
of  all  its  supernatural  manifestations.  By  the  power  of  the 
talisman  Almoran  in  Hamet's  form  glides  before  Almeida 
to  seduce  her;  but  Almeida,  although  she  thinks  that  it 
is  her  beloved  Hamet,  rejects  his  advances.  Then,  hard 
upon  Almoran's  departure,  there  enters  Hamet  retaining 
under  the  spell  the  form  of  Almoran.  Hamet  asks  Al- 
meida if  she  has  surrendered  her  virtue,  to  which  question 
addressing  him  as  Almoran  she  replies  that  she  will  have 
nothing  more  to  do  with  Hamet  since  he  had  tempted  her 
virtue.  Actuated  by  the  evil  nature  of  the  spell  Hamet, 
in  the  form  of  Almoran,  tries  to  force  a  marriage  with  the 
girl  he  sincerely  loves;  but  at  this  critical  moment  the 
touchstone  of  the  Coleridgean  Christabel-like  innocence 
of  Almeida  seems  to  restore  to  Hamet  his  former  virtues 
and  form.  Thus  Almoran  failed  to  ruin  Almeida  and 
Hamet;  and  he  was  changed  into  a  stone  as  'a  memorial 
of  the  truths  which  his  life  had  taught.'  This  Almoran, 
whose  heart  is  similar  to  that  which  is  within  Hawthorne's 
Ethan  Brand,  is  a  masculine  Geraldine  or  Lamia  embody- 
ing the  only  evil  which,  as  Milton  affirms,  walks  invisible 
except  to  God  alone. 

The  novels  of  Mrs.  Frances  Brooke  are  The  History  of 
Lady  Julia  Mandeville  (1763);  Emily  Montague  (1769); 
and  Excursion  (1777).  It  has  now  been  some  four  or 
five  years  since  I  first  read  that  short  novel  of  crisp,  re- 
freshing letters  highly  polished  in  style  called  Julia 
Mandeville.  I  thoroughly  enjoyed  myself  as  I  walked  in  a 
romantic  wood  amid  the  singing  of  birds  to  the  arbor  of 
jessamines  and  roses,  or  out  to  the  acres  where  Mr.  and 


138  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Mrs.  Herbert  dwelt  in  connubial  felicity.  As  I  remember 
it,  Mrs.  Frances  Brooke  gives  us  fine  scenes  in  natural 
description,  adorations  for  the  Creator,  quotations  from 
Cowley,  and  the  examination  of  butterflies'  wings.  Into 
all  this  quiet,  delightful  rural  life,  which  supplied  happi- 
ness to  the  lovers  Lady  Julia  and  Harry  Mandeville, 
suddenly  rushed  the  fatal  duel,  coffins,  and  a  double 
funeral.  The  descriptions  of  the  country  scenes  serve  as 
precursors  of  those  in  Miss  Mitford's  Our  Village  (1819- 
32) ;  and,  when  we  go  out  to  visit  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Herbert, 
we  are  again  strolling  over  the  hundred  flowery  acres  and 
through  the  groves  of  Basil  to  see  John  Buncle  in  1756 
aesthetically  propose  in  biblical  language  to  the  rural  Statia. 
In  Walpole's  The  Castle  of  Otranto  (1764)  the  fatal 
helmet  nodding  its  plumes  at  the  windows  and  the  sighing 
portrait,  which  quits  its  panel,  re-emphasize  the  stressing 
of  Gothicism,  which  had  been  present  in  Thomas  De- 
loney's  Thomas  of  Reading  and  Smollett's  Adventures  of 
Ferdinand,  Count  Fathom,  and  which  is  afterwards  found 
in  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  Mat- 
thew Lewis's  The  Monk,  Charles  Brockden  Brown's 
Wieland,  C.  R.  Maturin's  Melmoth,  Sir  Walter  Scott's  The 
Monastery,  Mrs.  Shelley's  Frankenstein,  Emily  Bronte's 
Wuthering  Heights,  Bulwer  Lytton's  Zanoni,  George  Mac- 
donald's  David  Elginbrod,  S.  R.  Crockett's  The  Black 
Douglas,  and  William  De  Morgan's  Alice-F or -Short.  In 
De  Morgan's  novel  there  is  the  lady  with  the  spots 
who  appears  not  only  to  Alice  in  "the  airey  way,"  but 
even  to  Charles  in  what  had  once  been  a  Queen  Anne 
ballroom  in  which  the  toupeed,  wicked  beauty  had  stooped 
to  pick  up  the  fatal  family  ring.  Aside  from  the  pathetic 
story  of  old  Jane,  the  absorbing  interest  of  this  master- 
piece centres  around  this  real  ghost  lady  with  the  spots 
who  has  had  pain  in  her  heart  from  the  time  of  the  birth 
of  Oliver  Goldsmith. 


Goldsmith's  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "       139 

Oliver  Goldsmith  on  March  27,  1766,  by  Johnson's  aid 
published  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  by  which  he  not  only 
measured  arms  with  the  dead  Richardson  and  Fielding 
but  also  with  the  living  Sterne  and  Smollett.  This  dra- 
matic bit  of  fiction  can  be  considered  almost  as  an  ac- 
cident of  Goldsmith's  genius.  Its  greatest  defect  is  its 
tendency  to  break  into  farce.  Goldsmith  was  always 
weak  when  it  came  to  constructing  plots ;  and  we  can  see 
very  readily  from  the  farcical  exaggerations  of  his  simple 
story  what  will  happen  to  him  in  1768  in  the  staging  of 
The  Good-Natured  Man  and  what,  in  1773,  when  Act  V 
Scene  II  was  on  (where  Mrs.  Hardcastle  supposes  herself 
to  be  forty  miles  from  home)  in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer, 
almost  damned  his  play  at  Covent  Garden.  As  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer  is  a  comedy  showing  characters  in 
farcical  situations,  and  as  the  excellence  of  The  Good- 
Natured  Man  depends  entirely  upon  the  way  in  which  an 
actor  can  shade  and  reshade  the  delineation  of  Croaker,  so 
likewise  is  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  perhaps  the  greatest 
farce  and  at  the  same  time  the  greatest  melodramatic, 
tragi-comic  novel  that  we  possess. 

The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  (1766)  in  reality  contained  with- 
in itself  the  melodramatic  tragi-comic  elements  of  The 
Good-Natured  Man  and  the  farcical  comic  strength  of  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,  which  were  yet  to  be  written  by 
Goldsmith.  What  carried  the  histrionic,  idyllic  novel  to 
greatness  was  characterization  endowed  with  that  peculiar 
quality  of  humor  which  no  other  man  except  Goldsmith 
possessed.  Goldsmith  for  sentiment  and  plot  devices  fell 
back  upon  Richardson.  Mr.  B.'s  purposed  sham  marriage 
of  himself  to  Pamela  by  aid  of  the  broken  attorney,  who 
was  to  personate  the  minister,  has  been  artfully  adapted 
by  Goldsmith  so  that  it  serves  as  a  boomerang  to  Thorn- 
hill  who  thought  he  had  safely  tricked  Olivia  by  a  sham 
marriage  and  never  dreamed  that  Jenkinson  had  tricked 


140  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


him  by  securing  a  true  license  and  a  true  priest.  Now 
these  Richardsonian  borrowings  including  the  post-chaise 
all  sink  into  subservient  insignificance  as  by  them  is 
perfected  an  optimist  who  takes  woe  and  weal  with  equal 
grace  and  thanks;  and,  as  long  as  there  is  no  danger  of 
losing  the  Vicar,  we  do  not  greatly  care  whether  the  story 
in  technique  goes  far  afield  or  not.  All  the  minor  charac- 
ters are  but  foils  to  set  off  the  virtues  of  him  who  by  "an 
habitual  acquaintance  with  misery"  went  through  "the 
truest  school  of  fortitude  and  philosophy,"  and  even  the 
ethical  phrases  bend  in  proper  support  to  this  clear  con- 
ception of  the  character  of  Dr.  Primrose:  "...  the 
nakedness  of  the  indigent  world  might  be  clothed  from  the 
trimmings  of  the  vain. "  /  "That  virtue  which  requires  to 
be  ever  guarded  is  scarce  worth  the  sentinel."/".  .  . 
never  strike  an  unnecessary  blow  at  a  victim,  over  whom 
Providence  holds  the  scourge  of  its  resentment."/  "Con- 
science is  a  coward;  and  those  faults  it  has  not  strength 
enough  to  prevent,  it  seldom  has  justice  enough  to  ac- 
cuse."/". .  .that  single  effort  by  which  we  stop  short 
in  the  downhill  path  to  perdition,  is  itself  a  greater  ex- 
ertion of  virtue  than  a  hundred  acts  of  justice."  /  "Good 
counsel  rejected,  returns  to  enrich  the  giver's  bosom." 

The  Vicar  is  a  compact  composite  of  Addison's  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  Fielding's  Parson  Adams,  and  Sterne's 
Uncle  Toby.  He  is  the  optimistic  Job  of  our  times  being 
portrayed  in  simplicity  of  narrative  to  set  off  the  good 
individual  in  life  for  whom  the  snares  are  set.  In  taking 
farewell  of  Goldsmith's  tour  de  force  one  can  never  forget 
the  perennial  charm  of  Moses  taken  in  by  sharpers  at  the 
fair,  and  the  ironical  announcement  of  Olivia's  flight  with 
young  Thornhill  to  the  Vicar  just  at  the  moment  when  he 
is  congratulating  his  wife,  Deborah,  on  the  fact  that  there  is 
no  blot  on  the  family  escutcheon,  for  these  two  scenes  form 
the  crescendo  of  comedy  and  tragedy  in  Goldsmith's  fiction. 


Brooke's  "The  Fool  of  Quality"        141 

From  the  year  1766  to  1770  in  the  schoolhouse  of  ad- 
versity Henry  Brooke's  big-hearted  Mr.  Fenton  remained 
in  the  same  seat  that  had  been  occupied  by  Dr.  Primrose 
sadly  conning  and  blotting  the  exercise-book  with  tears, 
and  that  which  he  has  learned  out  of  the  book  of  life  he 
resolves  into  a  unique  method  which  he  thinks  can  be 
employed  in  educating  his  nephew  Harry  Clinton  into  a 
manly,  happy  English  youth.  Thus  The  Fool  of  Quality 
presages  such  pedagogical  fiction  as  Day's  Sandford  and 
Merton  wherein  the  spoiled,  aristocratic  boy  Tommy 
Merton  receives  a  wonderful  education  from  Mr.  Barlow 
and  the  honest,  plebeian  boy  Harry  Sandford.  The  History 
oj Henry  Earl  of  Mor eland  by  its  methodization  of  pedagogy 
connects  Lyly's  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit  with  Sand- 
ford and  Merton,  which  was  inspired  by  Rousseau's  Emile. 

Almost  the  first  thing  that  this  wonderful  boy  Harry 
does  is  to  lay  the  ghost  of  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otranto,  and 
Brooke  adds  to  Harry's  bloody  disposal  of  the  horrible 
apparition  by  citing  the  story  of  how  hot  soup  was  fed 
to  a  gibbeted  corpse  on  Hallow-tide  eve.  When  the  brave 
individual  extended  the  broth  in  a  spoon  to  the  mouth  of 
the  dead,  the  man  clinging  to  the  back  of  the  corpse  in  a 
tone  deep  as  hell  said,  "It  i-is  too  ho-t,"  to  which  the  man 
with  the  spoon  replied,  "And  confound  you,  why  don't 
you  blow  it  then?"  It  is  such  as  this  that  makes  one  think 
of  Eaton  Barrett's  ghost  which  sneezes  and  says,  "Damn 
and  all  is  blown"  in  The  Heroine  (1813).  Harry  is  taught 
by  Mr.  Fenton  that  selfishness  hinders  all  happiness  in 
life.  The  uncle  believes  that  his  nephew  Harry  should  be 
taught  athletics  so  as  to  become  a  punching,  fighting 
hero.  He  believes  in  the  doctrine  of  benevolence,  and 
that  not  only  should  a  boy  be  benevolent  and  charitable, 
but  especially  a  school-teacher;  and  he  is  very  proud  of 
the  fact  that  the  boys  flog  Mr.  Vindex  out  of  his  profession. 
Like  Roger  Ascham  he  believes  that  no  Udalls  should  rule 


142  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

with  the  rod  in  England.  It  took  an  experience  in  Fleet 
prison  before  Mr.  Vindex  learned  to  become  a  model 
schoolmaster.  Mr.  Fenton  believes  that  a  child  must 
have  faults.  He  teaches  Harry  that  every  little  devil  can 
only  become  an  angel  when  he  is  permitted  all  alone  by 
himself  to  discover  the  devil  inside  of  himself.  Thus 
Harry  was  to  understand  that  there  are  always  two  boys 
in  every  one  boy,  and  that  it  is  the  angel,  or  spirit  of  God, 
that  makes  a  gentlemanly  boy.  Harry  at  an  early  age 
was  prompted  by  his  uncle  to  escape  from  the  hell  of  his 
own  nature.  He  was  taken  by  Mr.  Fenton  to  debtors' 
prisons  in  order  that  he  might  listen  to  his  uncle's  invec- 
tive against  such  an  unjust  method  of  punishment.  He 
mourned  with  his  uncle  for  sorrow-stricken  humanity  as 
he  visited  Newgate  and  Fleet  prison ;  and  was  quite  over- 
come, when  he  emerged  from  the  horrors  of  Bethlehem 
Hospital.  It  was  a  rare  education  which  he  received  as 
he  heard  his  uncle  wax  eloquent  upon  the  Britannic 
constitution;  liberties  of  the  English  people;  remedial 
legislation  for  bankrupts;  and  schemes  for  the  ameliora- 
tion of  the  pariahs  of  the  day  such  as  the  founding  of 
Magdelene  House  for  repentant  courtesans.  In  England 
and  on  the  continent  the  uncle  would  show  the  nephew 
that  suffering  is  an  antidote  to  the  poison  of  sin.  Thus 
it  can  readily  be  seen  that  Henry  Brooke  entered  the  field 
of  poverty  that  long  afterwards  proved  to  be  such  fertile 
soil  for  Charles  Dickens  to  till.  Brooke  at  every  turn 
anticipates  Dickens's  humanitarianism.  Brooke,  as  a 
socialist  of  the  eighteenth  century,  believes  that  the 
money  amassed  by  the  wealthy  is  extracted  from  the 
earnings  of  the  poor ;  and  in  sympathizing  with  the  down- 
trodden masses  is  like  Dickens  in  dwelling  on  the  joyous 
side  of  their  woes  as  when  poverty  assailed  the  good, 
faithful,  and  optimistic  Mr.  Clement  and  his  wife  Ara- 
bella.    Brooke  does  not  over-accentuate  poverty's  joy- 


Brooke's  "The  Fool  of  Quality"        143 

lessness  as  does  George  Gissing  in  Unclassed  (1884), 
Demos  (1886),  and  New  Grub  Street  (1891).  Brooke  does 
not  stand  for  Demos  grasping  the  sceptre;  nor  does  he 
ask  the  appalling  question:  "What  has  a  hungry  Demos 
to  do  with  the  beautiful?"  Nowhere  in  the  pages  of 
The  Fool  of  Quality  is  expressed  the  "supreme  passion  of 
revolt,"  felt  "in  the  heart  of  a  poet,"  who  must  be 
"subdued  by  poverty  to  the  yoke  of  ignoble  labor." 
Nor  is  there  conveyed  such  a  message  as  that  of  Gissing's 
curate  Wyvern  in  Demos; 

I  have  a  profound  dislike  and  distrust  of  this  same  progress. 
Take  one  feature  of  it — universal  education.  That,  I  believe, 
works  patently  for  the  growing  misery  I  speak  of.  Its  results 
affect  all  classes,  and  all  for  the  worse.  I  said  that  I  used  to 
have  a  very  bleeding  of  the  heart  for  the  half-clothed  and 
quarter-fed  hangers-on  to  civilization ;  I  think  far  less  of  them 
now  than  of  another  class  in  appearance  much  better  off.  It  is 
a  class  created  by  the  mania  of  education,  and  it  consists  of 
those  unhappy  men  and  women  whom  unspeakable  cruelty 
endows  with  intellectual  needs  whilst  refusing  them  the  sus- 
tenance they  are  taught  to  crave.  Another  generation,  and 
this  class  will  be  terribly  extended,  its  existence  blighting  the 
whole  social  state.  Every  one  of  these  poor  creatures  has  a 
right  to  curse  the  works  of  those  who  clamour  progress,  and 
pose  as  benefactors  of  their  race. 

Gissing  gives  poverty  at  times  a  sense  of  humor  such  as 
makes  it  send  up  to  heaven  miserable  laughter;  but 
Brooke  and  Dickens  cut  a  large  mouth  on  the  figure  of 
squalor  so  that  from  it  can  come  happy  child-like  laughter 
— which  makes  life  in  the  slums  no  ugly,  ignoble  gift  at 
the  hands  of  an  "unspeakable  cruelty." 

Throughout  Brooke's  novel  we  sink  under  the  weight 
of  sentiment.  Present  pathos  is  always  meeting  with  past 
pathos;  and  if  it  is  not  on  the  lips  of  the  characters,  it  is 
enfolding  the  speakers.     It  knocks  most  unexpectedly  at 


144  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

their  doors  in  the  form  it  had  taken  to  crush  the  characters 
who  were  under  discussion.  Major  characters  rush  out- 
side to  embrace  this  pathos,  and  those  left  behind  have 
not  long  to  wait  before  the  sublimity  of  suffering  begins 
for  themselves  or  for  others.  There  are  large  tears  and 
small  tears  continually  changing  into  great  drops  of  joy 
and  little  drops  of  joy.  Among  these  large-framed  ex- 
amples of  the  beauty  of  fate,  there  is  the  unforgettable 
picture  of  Mr.  Fenton  meeting  his  long-lost  Fanny  Good- 
all  with  whom  in  the  days  beyond  recall  he  had  played  at 
bob-cherry.  Mr.  Fenton,  after  the  death  of  his  first  wife, 
in  order  to  solace  himself,  was  extravagant  in  his  affection 
toward  his  little  cousin  Fanny  Goodall,  who,  though  ten 
years  of  age,  fostered  within  her  heart  for  him  the  true 
passion  of  love  of  which  he  was  entirely  ignorant.  Mr. 
Fenton  married  again  and  when  he  returned  from  France 
there  was  nothing  more  pathetic  than  the  words  of  this 
little  girl,  who  said  to  her  mamma,  "If  he  does  not  first 
unmarry  himself,  I  will  never  see  him  any  more,"  and 
refused  him  admission  to  her  presence;  but  the  little  girl 
still  loved  him,  as  she  continued  to  do  all  her  life,  though 
fate,  contrary  to  her  choice  of  heart,  compelled  her  to 
marry  twice.  The  picture  now  revealed  is  that  of  his 
meeting  her  as  the  beautiful  widow,  the  Countess  of 
Maitland.  At  the  close  of  the  novel  we  see  her  no  longer 
framed  as  such,  but  as  one  who  had  married  Marquess 
D'Aubigny  the  brother  of  Louisa,  who  had  been  the 
second  wife  of  Mr.  Fenton.  Thus  Fanny  Goodall  appears 
as  the  grandaunt  of  the  young  Moor  Abenamin,  who,  when 
the  disguise  is  torn  from  him,  proves  to  be  the  grand- 
daughter of  Mr.  Fenton's  dead  wife  Louisa.  Harry,  the 
hero,  marries  his  uncle's  granddaughter,  who  is  the  grand- 
niece  of  Mr.  Fenton's  long-lost  Fanny  Goodall.  There- 
fore Mr.  Fenton  did  not  quite  lose  Fanny  Goodall ;  nor  did 
she  quite  lose  him,  creeping  as  sister-in-law  much  closer  to 


Brooke's  Mr.  Fenton  145 

Mr.  Fenton  than  Thackeray's  Madame  de  Florae  was  able 
to  creep  in  the  bonds  of  flesh  to  Colonel  Newcome. 

Another  picture  adorned  with  crape  hangs  in  Henry 
Brooke's  gallery  of  pathos.  In  Richardson's  Clarissa 
Harlowe  (1747-48)  there  are  the  morbid  scenes  in  which 
the  heroine  day  after  day  arranges  her  coffin  and  keeps  it 
by  her  for  the  hour  of  the  funeral,  and  the  picture  before 
us  gives  a  similar  sensational  effect,  for  it  is  a  portrayal  of 
Harry  Clinton  in  his  room  with  a  casket  in  which  is  the 
body  of  his  beautiful  Pierre  (Maria  de  Lausanne)  that  he 
day  after  day  agonizingly  can  not  give  to  the  grave.  In 
order  to  appreciate  the  pathos  of  the  picture  one  must 
understand  that  Mr.  Fenton,  after  the  death  of  his  second 
wife  Louisa,  with  Harry  had  set  out  to  find  his  dear 
Fanny  Goodall  and  D'Aubigny.  After  arriving  in  Paris, 
Harry  one  night  attended  the  theatre  to  see  one  of  Racine's 
tragedies;  and,  at  the  close  of  the  performance,  entering 
what  was  supposed  to  be  his  own  carriage,  he  was  whirled 
away  to  what  he  took  to  be  the  edifice  in  which  he  and 
his  uncle  were  staying.  Upon  entering  Harry  was  ushered 
into  a  sumptuous  apartment  in  which  he  was  confronted 
by  a  most  beautiful  princess,  an  intimate  friend  of  Ma- 
dame de  Maintenon's,  who  told  him  that  he  would  have 
to  love  her  or  never  be  heard  of  again.  From  this  dreadful 
dilemma  he  was  rescued  by  a  well-dressed,  handsome 
youth  who  was  named  Pierre.  Harry  and  Pierre  fled 
to  Mr.  Fenton,  and  the  three  of  them  with  all  the 
haste  possible  escaped  from  France  by  way  of  Calais 
to  Dover,  under  the  cliffs  of  which,  as  Harry  was  shot 
at  by  a  ruffian,  Pierre  threw  himself  between  the  two 
and  received  a  fatal  wound.  As  Pierre  was  dying  he 
disclosed  his  identity  as  that  of  Maria  de  Lausanne,  the 
niece  of  the  bad  woman  back  in  Paris.  Maria  gave  up  her 
life  for  Harry  just  as  Thenardier's  daughter  sacrificed  her 
life  for  Marius  at  the  barricades  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les 


146  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Miserables,  but  with  this  difference  that  it  was  given  to 
Maria  to  die  upon  a  kiss,  while  in  Hugo  the  poor  girl  said, 
"Kiss  me  after  I  am  dead,  I  shall  feel  it."  Thus  tragedy 
sweeps  in  with  sceptred  pall  until  one  begins  to  believe 
that  even  Mr.  Fenton's  philanthropy  and  purse  of  For- 
tunatus  do  not  seem  big  enough  to  rid  the  world  of  all  its 
manifold  miseries. 

Straying  among  the  minor  pictures  perhaps  one  is 
startled  by  seeing  Fielding's  Amelia  living  again  as  Mr. 
Clement's  Arabella,  who  is  rushing  to  share  her  husband's 
fate  at  Fleet  prison;  and  Mr.  Clement  shows  us  what 
Booth  ought  to  have  been.  Pondering  over  life's  strange 
vicissitudes  made  bitter-sweet  by  Brooke's  touch  of 
pathos,  we  stop  before  the  picture  of  the  old  Earl  of  More- 
land,  the  father  of  Harry  Clinton,  on  the  night  of  his 
death.  The  old  Earl  is  revealed  on  the  canvas  in  strokes 
prophetic  of  William  De  Morgan.  In  Alice-  For -Short  one 
night  Old  Jane  said  that  her  one  wish  was  to  die  in  a 
dream  of  the  days  when  she  and  her  husband  had  walked 
hand-in-hand  in  the  Paddington  fields  listening  to  the  carol- 
ing of  the  larks.  Next  morning  Old  Jane  was  found  dead 
in  bed.  In  the  picture  before  us  the  old  Earl  is  saying, 
' '  0,  that  I  were  this  night,  this  very  moment,  to  be  dissolved 
and  to  be  with  my  Christ ! ' '  and  this  was  the  night  on  which 
"the  Earl  was  quite  happy  and  pleasant  and  affectionate 
even  beyond  his  custom. ' '  In  the  morning  he  was  found  dead 
and  his  last  words  had  been  about  the  resurrection  which 
was  the  only  part  of  the  Bible  Old  Jane  had  cared  to  read. 

Henry  Brooke  produced  one  other  novel  Juliet  Grenville, 
or  the  History  oj  the  Human  Heart  (1774)  which  is  of  little 
weight.  In  bridging  the  gap  from  Brooke  to  Mackenzie 
there  is  a  little  piece  of  fiction  in  two  volumes  that  can  not 
fail  to  delight  one  as  he  skims  along  over  a  minor  current 
of  a  tendency  that  was  to  be  one  of  the  contributors  to 
the  formation  of  the  formidable  rapids  in  which  were 


"Emmera,  or  the  Fair  American"      147 

whirled  the  barks  of  the  revolutionary  novelists.     The 
Adventures  of  Emmera,  or  the  Fair  American  (1767)  cap- 
tivates the  reader  by  the  descriptions  of  the  romantic 
beauty  of  the  back  country  near  Lake  Erie.     In  a  rural 
bower  under  jessamines  Chetwyn  an  European  man  of 
quality  reads  a  passage  about  Adam  and  Eve  in  Milton 
to  Emmera  who  has  never  before  met  an  European  except 
her  father.    Passionately  in  love  with  this  beautiful  girl, 
who  is  unacquainted  with  the  evils  of  the  polished  world  of 
civilization,  Chetwyn  farther  reads  to  her  Plutarch  and 
The  Spectator  in  pavilion  or  boat.     Emmera  had  always 
remembered  how  reluctantly  her  father  upon  his  death- 
bed in  the  wilderness  had  given  her  over  into  the  guardian- 
ship of  Chetwyn;  and,  upon  reading  the  newly  discovered 
narrative  of  her  father's  life,  she  remembered  his  words, 
"If  accident  discovers  you  to  an  European,  the  Indians 
will  nobly  defend  you."    Thus  the  more  Chetwyn  tries  to 
persuade  her,   the  more  Emmera  refuses  to  leave  the 
valley  for  the  environment  of  Europe  that  ruined  her 
father.    For  a  long  time  after  this  Emmera  and  Sir  Philip 
Chetwyn  hold  heated  discussions  upon  the  evil  and  the 
good  aspects  of  European  civilization.    At  length  Colonel 
Forrester,  who  hates  Chetwyn,  comes  over  to  America 
and  succeeds  in  kidnapping  Emmera  who  had  always 
been  safe  from  any  such  molestation  by  the  Indians.    It  is 
these  heroic  aborigines  who  rescue  her  from  Forrester  at 
the  critical  moment.     Therefore,  by  reason  of  this  ex- 
perience, she  despises  more  than  ever  a  man  of  the  world. 
Finally,  after  listening  to  Chetwyn 's  pleadings,  Emmera 
consents  to  go  back  to  England.    Here  at  Chetwyn  Manor 
under  his  guardianship  she  beholds  the  craze  of  English 
men  and  women  for  gambling,  observes  cruelty  to  animals, 
and  sees  a  poacher,  who  has  a  wife  and  three  helpless 
children,  sent  to  prison  for  life  for  killing  a  hare.    Filled 
with  the  spirit  of  humanitarianism  she  ironically  exclaims : 


148  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

"These  are  the  people  that  call  the  American  savages!  .  .  . 
I  have  quitted  the  neighborhood  of  men  to  become  the  com- 
panion of  brutes ! ' '  The  ultimatum  that  at  this  point  is  given 
Chetwyn  is  that,  if  he  will  leave  this  England  of  intolerable 
wickedness,  she  will  become  his  wife.  And  Sir  Philip  capitu- 
lates returning  to  live  with  her  in  rural  bliss  in  America 
with  virtuous  Indians  always  to  be  their  companions. 

I  must  confess  that  I  can  not  conceive  any  great  liking 
for  the  novels  of  that  graduate  of  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh and  barrister  Henry  Mackenzie.  His  fiction  is 
steeped  in  the  style  of  the  "weeps"  dropped  by  Sterne. 
It  is  indeed  a  painful  journey  to  walk  by  the  side  of  Mr. 
Harley  who  saturates  all  handkerchiefs,  and  it  is  a  great 
relief  when  the  poor  fellow  falls  into  a  decline.  Positive 
pleasure  arises  when  there  is  thrust  upon  him  Miss  Walton 
who  strikes  him  stone  dead  by  her  unexpected  reciproca- 
tion of  love.  There  is  little  in  The  Man  of  Feeling  (1771) 
but  this  gossamer  plot  of  sensibility  in  which  is  the  old 
trick  of  the  inset  story,  such  as  that  of  Emily  Atkins. 
Nor  in  Julia  de  Roubigne  (1777)  can  one  take  much  interest 
either  in  the  marionettes  Savillon  and  Julia  that  jump  up 
and  down  in  sentimentalism  or  in  the  major  puppet 
Count  de  Montauban  that  out  of  jealousy  Othello-like 
gnaws  his  nether  lip  and  poisons  Julia  his  wife,  who  is  the 
angelic  doll  heroine  suspected  of  infidelity  in  the  melo- 
drama. In  Julia  de  Roubigne  what  attracts  the  reader  is 
buried  in  the  subsidiary  episode  that  tells  of  Savillon 's 
humanitarian  experiment  with  negro  slaves  on  the  planta- 
tion in  Martinique.  Savillon  freed  his  slave  Yambu  for 
the  purpose  of  having  him  direct  negroes  that  had  once 
saluted  him  as  prince  in  Africa.  These  negroes  under 
humane  treatment  and  infused  with  the  spirit  of  their 
liberty  did  more  than  almost  double  their  number  subject 
to  the  whip  of  an  overseer.  Savillon's  experiment  was 
successful;   for   they   worked    "with   the   willingness   of 


Mackenzie's  "Man  of  the  World"       149 

freedom,"  yet  were  his  "with  more  than  the  obligation  of 
slavery."  Mackenzie's  account  of  Savillon  in  Martinique 
was  anticipated  in  1 722  by  Defoe  in  the  narrative  of  Colonel 
Jack,  who  tells  us  how  as  overseer  on  a  Virginia  planta- 
tion he  succeeded  in  the  experiment  of  treating  his  slaves 
humanely.    Colonel  Jack  ends  his  vivid  account  by  saying, 

we  found  the  fear  of  being  turned  out  of  the  plantation  had  as 
much  effect  to  reform  them,  that  is  to  say,  make  them  more 
diligent,  than  any  torture  would  have  done;  and  the  reason  was 
evident,  namely,  because  in  our  plantation  they  were  used  like 
men,  in  the  other  like  dogs. 

It  is  in  The  Man  of  the  World  (1773)  that  one  finds 
Mackenzie's  highest  grade  of  work  as  it  centres  about  the 
death  of  the  old  philosophic  Cherokee  chief,  who,  like 
Cooper's  Delaware  Chingachgook,  dies  true  to  the  faith 
of  his  ancestors.  As  one  listens  to  his  rhapsody  on  how 
death  can  have  no  terrors  for  an  Indian  who  has  led  no 
ignoble  life,  there  is  a  tacit  consent  to  Annesly's  comment, 
"I  blushed  for  the  life  of  Christians."  In  The  Man  of 
Feeling  Mackenzie  had  given  his  readers  an  old  Indian, 
who  saved  the  life  of  Edwards  his  benefactor,  and  who 
reduced  his  life  to  poverty  for  the  sake  of  this  man  that 
had  freed  him  from  the  lash.  The  farewell  words  of  this 
old  Indian  are,  "You  are  an  Englishman,  but  the  Great 
Spirit  has  given  you  an  Indian  heart."  In  The  Man  of 
the  World,  by  an  idealization  of  the  Cherokees  as  they 
lived  a  paradisaical  existence  in  the  American  Colonies, 
Mackenzie  was  a  precursor  of  the  revolutionary  group  of 
novelists  such  as  Thomas  Holcroft,  Robert  Bage,  and 
Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith.  Annesly  was  so  enraptured  with 
his  Indian  life  that  it  was  with  great  reluctance  that  he 
returned  to  England;  and,  when  he  did  return,  he  was 
shipwrecked  on  the  southwest  coast  and  there  almost 
lost  his  life  as  he  was  beaten  back  into  the  surf  by  the 


150  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

bludgeons  in  the  hands  of  the  wreckers.  This  part  of  the 
novel  is  a  powerful  contrast  study  of  the  American  Indians 
and  the  Europeans  that  endeavors  to  demonstrate  that 
the  French  and  the  English  were  the  real  "pauvres  sau- 
vages"  who  were  worse  than  the  worst  of  the  Cherokees. 
Thus,  it  can  be  seen  how  susceptible  Mackenzie  was  to 
that  revolutionary  atmosphere,  the  pressure  of  which  had 
been  palpable  in  Emmera,  or  the  Fair  American  (1767). 

In  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  there  are  astonishing  ad- 
ventures that  tragically  involve  the  good  curate  who  feels 
called  upon  to  preach  a  gospel  of  repentance  to  sinners 
even  when  he  is  jailed  as  one  of  them  himself.  Generally 
Dr.  Primrose  is  a  good  evangelist  when  he  is  on  the  road ; 
and  this  Goldsmithian  gleefulness  of  dancing  to  the  tune 
of  tragedy  creating  comedy  is  not  felt  again  in  English 
fiction  until  the  rector  of  Claverton  wrote  a  comic  romance 
in  which  Mr.  Geoffry  Wildgoose,  a  graduate  of  Oxford, 
with  Jeremiah  Tugwell  rambles  over  the  western  part  of 
England  imitating  the  great  revivalist  Whitefield  to  bring 
about  primitive  piety,  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformation, 
and  a  new  system  of  religion  favorable  to  Nonconformists 
and  partial  to  the  Methodists. 

In  the  Reverend  Richard  Graves's  The  Spiritual 
Quixote  (1772)  Wildgoose  and  Jerry  set  out  on  their 
spiritual  adventures  from  their  native  village  on  a  beauti- 
ful summer  morning. 

There  was  an  extensive  prospect  of  the  rich  vale  of  Evesham, 
bounded  at  a  distance  by  the  Malvern  hills.  The  towers  and 
spires,  which  rose  amongst  the  tufted  trees,  were  strongly 
illuminated  by  the  sloping  rays  of  the  sun:  and  the  whole 
scene  was  enlivened  by  the  music  of  the  birds ;  the  responsive 
notes  of  the  thrushes  from  the  neighboring  hawthorns,  and  the 
thrilling  strains  of  the  skylark,  who,  as  she  soared  towards 
the  heavens,  seemed  to  be  chanting  forth  her  matins  to  the 
great  Creator  of  the  universe. 


Graves's  "The  Spiritual  Quixote"      151 

But  never  again  on  these  knights-errant  did  nature 
smile  so  auspiciously.  All  the  way  from  the  Cotswold 
hills  to  Bristol  in  evil  report  Wildgoose  preached  to  the 
folk  that  they  should  be  converted  by  moving  from 
repentance  to  faith;  and  it  was  high  time  that  he  should 
meet  the  great  Whitefield,  who  preached  from  faith  to 
repentance.  One  of  the  cleverest  strokes  in  the  novel 
is  where  Graves  takes  Wildgoose  and  the  one-toothed 
cobbler  into  an  upper  room  at  Bristol  to  interview  the 
confrere  of  John  Wesley's,  and  his  own  one-time  acquaint- 
ance at  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  the  spiritual  White- 
field,  who  is  revealed  to  the  eyes  of  his  proselytes  adorned 
in  a  purple  nightgown  and  velvet  cap  with  a  plate  of  well- 
buttered  muffins  and  a  basin  of  chocolate  before  him. 
The  knights  advance  and  Tugwell  expresses  the  desire 
that  they  wish  a  little  more  of  his  gospel  lingo.  White- 
field  is  at  first  reluctant  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
them,  and  only  warms  to  the  situation  when  he  finds  out 
that  Wildgoose  is  an  opulent  convert.  He  is  then  con- 
vinced that  they  have  received  the  new  birth  which,  in 
the  case  of  Jerry,  had  been  produced  by  colic  superinduced 
by  higry-pigry  cider.  Whitefield  then  announced  that  he 
felt  that  they  were  peculiarly  called  to  redeem  the  poor 
colliers  in  Stafford  and  Shropshire,  who  certainly  belonged 
to  the  devil  by  their  subterraneous  employment.  Before 
they  go,  however,  Whitefield  is  determined  to  show  them 
all  the  tricks  of  the  profession.  Wildgoose  is  taught  that 
only  rich  men  and  ladies  are  stars  of  the  first  magnitude 
in  this  kind  of  evangelistic  work.  He  hears  the  great 
Whitefield  preach,  and  imitates  his  style  of  oratory. 
What  was  natural  in  Whitefield's  speaking  became  utterly 
ridiculous  as  it  proceeded  from  the  mouth  of  Wildgoose. 
The  only  genuine  convert  that  he  has  is  a  thirteen-year- 
old  girl  who  claims  that  she  has  been  "pricked  through 
and  through  with  the  word,"  and  at  last  Wildgoose's 


152  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

eloquence  causes  the  meeting  to  break  up  in  riotous  dis- 
order. 

After  leaving  Bristol,  Wildgoose,  as  a  revivalist,  is  un- 
successful in  public  and  in  private,  and  spiritual  bene- 
dictions rain  in  upon  him  in  the  form  of  rotten  apples ;  and, 
when  he  is  among  the  colliers,  even  John  Wesley  dissuades 
him  from  going  on  in  his  mad  career.  To  show  how  far 
gone  Wildgoose  is  in  his  delusions,  Richard  Graves  at 
one  place  in  the  novel  takes  him  to  the  house  of  Shenstone 
who  had  been  his  old  friend  at  Oxford.  Wildgoose  and 
Jerry  open  the  poet's  sluices,  destroy  his  cataracts,  rural 
faun,  and  other  bits  of  inanimate  beauties  adorning  the 
estate.  They  believe  that  Shenstone  worships  these 
objects.  They  can  not  last  out  the  night  in  Shenstone' s 
"  Folly,"  for  the  whole  place  reeked  of  unspiritualization  of 
ideas.  At  last  the  summer  rambles  of  Wildgoose,  crazy  for 
the  light  of  Methodism  as  was  Smollett's  Clinker  of  1771, 
come  to  an  end  as  he  delivers  a  farewell  sermon  that  comes 
to  an  abrupt  close  by  the  thump  of  a  decanter  which  finds 
the  soft  spot  on  his  head.  The  decanter,  Dr.  Greville,  and 
Julia  Townsend,  deter  him  from  further  continuance  in  a 
wrong  course  of  life.  He  marries  Julia  Townsend,  who  more 
than  any  one  else  had  been  instrumental  in  pulling  him  from 
a  death-bed  of  religious  delirium  into  a  sane  view  of  life. 

This  Julia  Townsend  had  had  a  very  unhappy  home  life, 
had  fed  on  the  romances  of  the  time,  knew  all  about 
fauns,  satyrs,  knights,  savages,  and  romantic  heroines 
who  because  of  domestic  unhappiness  ran  away  from 
home  to  return  always  in  triumph.  Miss  Townsend,  with 
her  head  stuffed  full  of  these  things,  ran  away  to  London, 
there  to  find  out,  by  her  experience  with  Mr.  Blackman, 
how  few  romantic  heroines  returned  to  a  world  of  sanity 
and  happiness.  Miracles  were  worked  in  behalf  of  Miss 
Townsend  in  order  that  she  might  be  disillusionized  so  as 
to  become  a  fit  bride  for  the  man  she  helped  restore  to 


Clara  Reeve's  "Old  English  Baron"     153 


sanity — Mr.  GeofTry  Wildgoose.  This  Julia,  reminiscent 
of  Mrs.  Lennox's  Arabella,  gives  the  reader  premonitory 
thrills  of  those  experiences  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  Eaton 
Barrett's  extraordinarily  romantic  Cherubina  de  Wil- 
loughby  of  1 8 13.  It  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  Dodsley 
should  have  issued  the  second  edition  of  The  Spiritual 
Quixote  with  illustrations  in  three  volumes  in  1774. 

Some  of  the  novels  of  Clara  Reeve  are  The  Champion 
of  Virtue,  a  Gothic  Story  (1777)  (The  Old  English  Baron); 
The  Two  Mentors:  a  Modern  Story  (1783);  The  Exiles,  or 
Memoirs  of  Count  de  Cronstadt  (1788);  and  The  School  for 
Widows:  a  Novel  (1791).  Clara  Reeve  wrote  The  Old 
English  Baron  to  remove  the  toggery  of  the  clap-trap 
paraphernalia  of  Gothicism  so  that  the  supernatural  might 
be  reduced  to  its  proper  dimensions.  With  a  pen-knife 
sharp  with  simplicity  she  pared  away  from  the  helmet  the 
black  feathers,  which  nodded  by  moonlight  at  the  window 
to  scare  Walpole's  Manfred  and  Isabella,  so  that  one 
feather  remained  to  be  afterwards  fastened  by  Scott  over 
the  head  of  Edgar  Ravenswood  in  the  castle  of  Wolfs- 
crag;  and  she  cut  into  ribbons  the  canvas  on  which  was 
painted  the  portrait  of  Manfred's  grandfather,  so  that  he 
could  not  heave  his  chest  or  jump  to  the  floor,  and  she 
took  the  hinges  off  all  doors  that  were  clapped  to  by 
invisible  hands.  Her  postulate  of  Gothicism  seemed  to  be 
this:  a  ghost  should  be  seen  once  or  twice;  and  a  groan, 
preceding  such  a  visitation,  should  not  be  more  than  thrice 
repeated.  Clara  Reeve  made  it  possible  for  Mrs.  RadclirTe 
to  create  on  the  borderland  of  the  supernatural  the  many 
groans  that  make  the  reader  stand  by  in  expectancy  of 
apparitions  destined  never  to  disturb  the  stage  of  action. 

The  plot  of  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otranto  is  a  hodge-podge 
of  shudders.  Clara  Reeve  did  away  with  Walpole's 
shivers  and  moulded  into  shape  an  orderly  plot.  Arthur 
Lord  Lovel  was  assassinated  by  his  kinsman  Lord  Walter 


154  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Lovel,  who  in  this  way  secured  the  coveted  estates. 
After  the  murder  Lord  Walter  confined  his  victim's  wife 
in  the  east  apartment  in  the  castle,  where  within  a  month 
she  died.  From  this  time  on  this  part  of  the  castle  was 
haunted  by  the  ghosts  of  Lord  Arthur  and  his  wife.  It 
was  for  this  reason  that  Lord  Walter  soon  sold  the  castle 
and  estates  to  his  brother-in-law,  Fitz-Owen,  in  whose 
service  was  a  boy  by  the  name  of  Edmund  Twyford. 
At  length  it  happened  that  Baron  Fitz-Owen  ordered 
Edmund  to  sleep  three  nights  in  the  east  apartment. 
Being  an  obedient  youth  Edmund  on  the  second  night 
went  thither  accompanied  by  the  servant  old  Joseph  and 
his  preceptor  Father  Oswald ;  and  it  was  on  this  occasion 
that  heaven  revealed  to  the  three  of  them  by  means  of  a 
groan  thrice  repeated  how  murder  had  been  committed 
upon  the  person  buried  beneath  the  floor.  Edmund  knelt 
beside  the  grave  and  in  solemn  prayer  dedicated  his  life 
to  finding  out  the  perpetrator  of  the  villainy.  At  last  it  is 
wholly  revealed  that  this  Edmund  was  the  lawful  heir  to 
the  estates,  since  he  was  the  son  of  Lord  Arthur  Lovel. 
Thus  it  can  be  felt  that  the  novel,  barring  the  groans  and 
the  ghost,  is  a  tedious  story  of  the  days  of  Henry  VI ;  but 
it  seems  to  the  reader  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  with  his  electric 
pen  must  have  touched  this  corpse  of  prolix  stuff  so  that 
it  jumped  to  its  feet  to  wander  throughout  his  novels 
animated  with  a  soul  because  of  his  knowing  how  to 
blend  with  an  exact  sense  of  proportion  that  which  is 
genuinely  historical  with  that  which  is  the  so-called  super- 
natural as  in  The  Monastery.  In  other  words,  Scott  took 
Clara  Reeve's  apparently  dead-born  offspring  The  Old 
English  Baron,  chafed  its  cold  body,  and  breathed  the 
breath  of  life  into  it ;  and  lo !  it  leaped  up  to  fold  its  moon- 
light wings  crosswise  on  its  breast  to  do  obeisance  before 
the  "Wizard  of  the  North"  as  the  full-grown,  genuine 
Gothic  historical  romance. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Frances  Bvirney,  Robert  Bag'e,  Sophia  Lee, 
Thomas  Day,  "William  BecKford,  JoKn 
Moore,  Charlotte  Smith,  and  Ann  Radcliffe 

FRANCES  BURNEY,  in  spite  of  her  own  expressed 
wishes,  walks  through  the  same  field  in  which 
Richardson  and  Fielding  left  their  footprints,  and 
culls  the  same  variety  of  flowers.  In  the  seizure  of  Evelina 
by  Sir  Clement  Willoughby  we  are  back  again  at  Lissom 
Green  with  Harriet  Byron  and  Sir  Hargrave  Pollexfen; 
and  Evelina's  adventures  as  depicted  at  Vauxhall  are  only 
a  feeble  reproduction  of  Fielding's  vigorous  sketch  of 
Amelia's  experiences  in  the  Gardens.  The  spirited  quarrel, 
which  occurs  in  the  garden  when  virtuous  Lord  Orville 
sees  the  rake  Sir  Clement  Willoughby  caressing  Evelina's 
hand,  and  which  conveys  to  the  full  understanding  of  the 
reader  that  Lord  Orville's  jealousy  from  now  on  means 
true  love,  foreshadows  the  finer  technique  of  that  fierce 
quarrel  which  ensues  when  noble  Dorriforth  sees  profligate 
Lord  Frederick  Lawnly  smothering  Miss  Milner's  hand 
with  kisses  and  strikes  him  in  Mrs.  Inchbald's  A  Simple 
Story  (1791).  Evelina  is  an  improvement  upon  Mrs. 
Haywood's  The  History  of  Miss  Betsy  Thoughtless.  Eve- 
lina is  a  thoughtful  Betsy,  for  she  never  loses  her  head  in 
the  fashionable  world  at  Ranelagh,  the  Pantheon,  Pic- 
cadilly, Hyde  Park,  and  Kensington  Gardens.  Though 
seeming  to  spend  most  of  her  time  dressing  for  balls  or 

i55 


156  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

going  to  see  Garrick  at  Drury  Lane  or  Congreve's  play 
Love  for  Love  put  on,  Evelina  always  has  time  to  pay 
attention  to  the  advice  of  Mr.  Villars,  who  can  write 
letters  as  fine  as  those  written  by  Jery  Melford  in  Smol- 
lett's Humphry  Clinker  (1771);  therefore  she  always 
favors  the  gallant  Lord  Orville  and  repels  the  alarming 
Sir  Clement  Willoughby. 

It  has  been  said  that  Evelina  has  been  poorly  plotted, 
but  it  seems  to  the  present  writer  that  the  story  in  its 
warp  and  woof  is  as  good  as  anything  we  have  up  to  1778 
outside  of  the  ordering  of  the  action  in  Fielding's  Tom 
Jones.  And  in  1778  literary  London  applauded  Evelina 
or  The  History  of  a  Young  Lady's  Entrance  into  the  World 
because  the  novel  held  its  readers  from  first  page  to  last 
by  the  excitatory  episodes  of  a  plot  beclouding  the  birth 
of  its  heroine.  Mr.  Evelyn,  the  grandfather  of  Evelina, 
married  a  waiting  girl  at  a  tavern.  In  two  years  he  dies 
leaving  his  daughter  Caroline  to  the  care  of  Mr.  Villars. 
Afterwards  her  mother,  who  had  married  Monsieur  Duval, 
sent  for  her  daughter  whom  she  tried  to  force  into  marriage 
with  one  of  her  nephews.  In  this  predicament  Miss 
Caroline  Evelyn  without  a  witness  privately  married  Sir 
John  Belmont,  who,  disappointed  at  the  fortune  he  ex- 
pected, burned  the  certificate  of  marriage,  and  denied 
that  they  had  ever  been  united.  His  wife  threw  herself 
on  the  mercy  of  Mr.  Villars  who  tried  to  help  her  estab- 
lish the  validity  of  the  marriage,  but  in  vain.  She  died 
in  giving  birth  to  a  daughter,  Evelina,  who  was  carefully 
brought  up  by  her  guardian  Mr.  Villars.  At  the  time  of 
Evelina's  birth,  the  nurse  sent  her  own  infant  daughter  to 
France  to  Sir  John  Belmont,  who  never  suspected  the 
fraud.  This  changeling  was  raised  as  Miss  Belmont,  the 
lawful  daughter  of  Sir  John.  This  girl  finally  appeared 
at  Bristol.  Mr.  Villars  and  Evelina's  friends  cleared  up 
the  mystery.    By  the  confession  of  the  nurse,  Evelina  was 


Frances  Burney's  " Evelina"  157 

proved  to  be  the  legitimate  daughter  of  Caroline  Evelyn 
(Lady  Belmont). 

The  movement  of  this  excellent  plot  however  lags  by 
reason  of  excessive  characterization  given  within  the 
scenes.  Frances  Burney  has  endeavored  to  stage  moods 
according  to  Congrevian  humor  exemplified  in  the  peculi- 
arities of  Evelina's  suitors.  The  novel  is  filled  with 
romanticism  and  realism.  When  we  are  not  suffering 
cardiac  depression  on  account  of  the  frequency  of  the 
fainting  spells  of  Evelina,  and  fearing  imminent  death 
as  we  listen  to  the  pathetic  effusions  of  Macartney  the 
poet,  who  points  pistols  at  our  heads,  we  transfer  our 
attention  to  the  transactions  of  the  vulgar  Branghtons 
the  family  living  on  Snow  Hill.  From  a  theatrical  point 
of  view  the  finest  scene  in  the  novel  is  where  Evelina  is 
upon  her  knees  before  her  father.  Frances  Burney  as  a 
histrionic  artist  gives  an  excellent  example  in  dramatic 
hedging  so  as  to  make  a  transfer  of  sympathy  to  Sir  John 
Belmont;  and,  as  a  represser  of  denouement  in  all  her 
novels,  she  can  keep  a  surprise  in  store  for  her  reader  until 
the  last  pages.  She  seems  never  to  be  in  a  hurry  and 
when  the  proper  time  comes  she  reveals  Macartney,  the 
pistol-pointing  poet,  as  Sir  John  Belmont's  illegitimate 
son.  Thirty-six  years  after  Frances  Burney  had  taken 
literary  London  by  storm,  it  was  not  until  the  fourth 
volume  of  The  Wanderer  (18 14)  that  she  established  Ellis 
or  Juliet  as  the  half-sister  of  Lady  Aurora  Granville. 

Evelina  had  direct  influence  upon  Maria  Edge  worth, 
whose  Miss  Nugent,  in  The  Absentee  (18 12),  suffered 
aspersion  until  the  clouds  surrounding  her  birth  mystery 
had  been  dissipated;  and  Evelina's  sensibility,  presaging 
Cecilia's  and  Camilla's,  was  used  by  Jane  Austen  to  color 
that  of  Marianne  Dashwood,  Catherine  Morland,  Fanny 
Price,  and  Anne  Elliot.  Also  Mrs.  Ann  Radclifle  went  to 
Frances  Burney  for  excessive  weepings  and  blushings ;  and 


158J  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

these  exuberant  exhibitions  of  sensibility  continued  until 
Jane  Austen  quietly  soothed  these  pathological  outbursts 
by  the  application  of  the  compress  of  sane  sentiment  to  the 
skulls  of  supersensitive  heroines. 

Cecilia;  or  Memoirs  of  an  Heiress  was  published  in  1782. 
Cecilia,  the  heroine  of  this  novel,  is  deeper  substance 
given  to  the  shadow  Evelina  by  reason  of  being  placed 
from  time  to  time  at  the  centres  of  various  groups  of 
minor  characters,  whose  excessive  obeisance  to  the  queen  of 
the  lined-up  circles  lends  a  false  greatness  to  the  concep- 
tion of  her  character.  By  a  kind  of  legerdemain  Frances 
Burney  makes  us  plunge  through  great  minor  charac- 
ters to  an  ordinary  heroine,  who  is  only  extraordinary 
when  she  is  studied  in  the  light  of  their  extraordinary 
characteristics.  When  Cecilia  is  continually  lending 
money  to  Mr.  Harrel,  the  gambler,  whose  wife  is  given  to 
luxury  and  society,  or  when  in  contact  with  Mr.  Briggs  the 
miser,  or  Mr.  Delvile  the  devotee  of  high  lineage,  or  under 
the  pressure  of  Mr.  Monckton,  the  adjuster,  whose  old 
wife  refuses  to  die  and  leave  him  her  money  so  that  he  can 
marry  Cecilia,  our  heroine  seems  to  be  playing  up  to  a 
part  far  above  all  of  them.  Wonderful  pieces  of  minor 
characterization  are  brought  to  play  about  her.  Through- 
out the  other  three  novels  of  Frances  Burney  there  are 
not  such  healthy  little  personalities  as  Sir  Robert  Floyer, 
the  despicable  gallant,  who  would  marry  Cecilia  so  as 
to  pay  off  gambling  debts  incurred  by  Mr.  Harrel;  the 
vivacious,  gift-of-gab  Miss  Larolles;  the  imperious  Miss 
Leeson;  the  tell-tale  Lady  Honoria  Pemberton;  the  ob- 
sequious Morrice;  the  lackadaisical  Meadows;  the  ambi- 
tious Mr.  Belfield  who  never  knows  how  to  get  on  in  life ; 
and  the  lovable  Albany  who  is  always  descanting  on  the 
vices  of  the  rich  and  moving  in  regions  of  poverty  to 
relieve  its  victims. 

The  scenic  work  in  Cecilia  is  an  improvement  on  that 


Frances  Burney's  "Cecilia"  159 

in  Evelina.  The  suicide  of  Harrel  at  Vauxhall  after  he  has 
given  a  banquet  to  his  creditors  is  intensely  dramatic;  and 
Cecilia  steps  forward  from  the  box  in  the  Gardens  as 
much  the  mistress  of  the  situation  as  Jane  Austen's  Anne 
Elliot  when  Miss  Musgrove  fell  from  the  Cobb  at  Lyme. 
The  storm  scene  is  also  good;  and,  as  the  external  world 
thus  draws  two  lovers  closer  together,  there  is  the  pre- 
figurement  of  the  thunder-roll  that  affected  Charlotte 
Bronte's  Rochester  and  Jane  Eyre  and  George  Eliot's 
Ladislaw  and  Dorothea,  who,  in  the  library  as  the  light- 
ning flashes,  child-like  approaches  Ladislaw  to  tell  him 
that  she  loves  love  and  even  his  poverty,  and  that  above 
everything  she  has  learned  to  hate  her  own  wealth.  The 
marriage  ceremony  of  Delvile  and  Cecilia  that  is  inter- 
rupted in  the  church  by  a  feminine  voice  is  a  hasty- 
pudding  affair  when  it  is  contrasted  with  that  in  Jane 
Eyre.  Any  girl  with  spirit  in  her  would  have  gone  on 
with  the  ceremony  and  would  have  become  the  wife  of 
Delvile  because  no  explanation  at  the  time  is  given  by  the 
woman  who  protests  against  it.  The  greatest  scene  of  all 
according  to  Fanny  Burney's  opinion  is  that  of  the  great 
appeal  that  Mrs.  Delvile  makes  for  the  renunciation  of 
Cecilia's  happiness.  She  makes  a  tremendous  fight  for  her 
son  bursting  a  blood-vessel  in  order  to  gain  her  point. 
The  lovers  are  to  be  sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  pride  and 
prejudice.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  was  susceptible  to  the  same  idea 
in  The  Italian  (1797)  when  she  has  the  Marchesa  di  Vi- 
valdi go  so  far  as  to  attempt  the  removal  of  Ellena  di 
Rosalba  to  save  her  boy  from  what  she  thought  would  be  a 
misalliance.  The  mad  scene  at  the  end  of  the  novel  in 
which  Cecilia  goes  distraught,  because  of  being  misunder- 
stood by  her  husband,  is  singularly  effective.  In  delirium, 
locked  in  a  room  until  Albany  brings  Delvile  to  the  rescue, 
she  almost  classifies  herself  as  one  of  the  mad  ladies  in 
English  fiction.     But  she  manages  to  survive  this  fit  of 


i6o  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

temporary  insanity  to  gain  Lady  Delvile's  affection  and 
round  out  a  happy  married  life.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
last  part  of  Cecilia  is  an  episodic  series  of  fireworks  going 
off  in  pin  wheel  fashion.  One  can  not  escape  the  conclusion 
that  the  merit  of  the  whole  novel  lies  not  so  much  in  the 
depiction  of  Cecilia  as  in  the  extended  characterization 
given  the  minor  characters  within  the  scenes. 

Camilla;  or,  A  Picture  of  Youth  in  five  volumes  was 
published  in  London  in  1796.  Fanny  D'Arblay's  dedica- 
tion to  the  Queen  and  a  long  list  of  the  names  of  sub- 
scribers form  prefatory  matter  to  the  first  volume;  thus, 
the  Queen  might  have  whiled  away  an  idle  hour  as 
requested  in  the  dedication.  The  novel  is  a  strange  med- 
ley. In  the  parsonage-house  of  Etherington,  Hampshire, 
Camilla  Tyrold  lives  with  her  two  sisters,  Eugenia  and 
Lavinia,  and  a  brother  called  Lionel.  Camilla's  uncle 
Sir  Hugh  Tyrold,  of  Yorkshire,  comes  into  the  neighbor- 
hood bringing  with  him  his  niece  Indiana  Lynmere  and 
his  nephew  Clermont.  We  are  straightway  introduced 
to  a  young  man  Edgar  Mandlebert,  a  ward  of  Camilla's 
father.  Then  begin  the  startling  small  occurrences  of  the 
novel.  Eugenia  takes  the  smallpox  to  be  pitted  for  life. 
A  mad  bull  secretly  tormented  by  Lionel  causes  a  panic 
among  the  women.  Indiana  flees  to  the  arms  of  Melmond, 
a  handsome  young  fop,  who  blurts  out,  "Alas!  I  trespass 
.  .  .  I  blush";  and,  as  he  gazed  upon  Indiana,  "passionate 
devotion  was  glaring  from  his  look,"  and  the  reader  can 
not  help  but  make  a  comparison  between  this  Oxonian 
and  the  bull  previously  mentioned.  In  volume  two  there 
is  little  of  consequence  except  the  humorous  way  in  which 
Othello  is  put  on  by  an  illiterate  troupe  who  are  exceedingly 
effective  in  their  dialect.  The  rustic  Moor  of  Venice, 
as  he  bends  with  his  candle  to  slay  his  slattern  Des- 
demona,  brings  down  the  house  by  having  his  hair  catch 
on  fire  just  at  the  point  where  he  is  putting  out  the  light 


Frances  Burney's  "Camilla"  161 

of  his  life.  But  at  this  terrible  moment  the  audience  is 
hurled  into  still  deeper  tragedy  by  the  announcement  of 
the  fact  that  Camilla's  uncle  is  dying. 

In  volume  three  we  take  a  walk  by  moonlight  near 
Tunbridge  to  gaze  at  a  fair  incognita  upon  a  wild,  roman- 
tic common.  A  lane  is  also  traversed  which  is  rendered 
beautiful  "by  the  strong  masses  of  shades  with  which  the 
trees  intercepted  the  resplendent  whiteness  of  the  moon." 
Not  long  after  this  Camilla  becomes  strangely  interested 
in  a  cage  containing  a  bullfinch  around  which  is  floating 
a  sentiment  such  as  encircled  Sterne's  starling.  Then 
Lionel  steals  the  draft  that  throws  his  sister  into  debt 
which  ultimately  causes  Edgar's  desertion  of  Camilla 
and  the  imprisonment  of  her  father.  Lionel  was  the  com- 
piicator  of  the  tragedy  of  little  boresome  things.  Im- 
prudence and  suspicion  cause  Camilla  and  Edgar  to  be 
separated;  and,  as  a  result,  as  the  heroine  approaches 
Southampton,  she  refuses  even  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  tonic. 
She  does  indeed  observe  the  beauties  of  nature,  but  will 
not  by  these  agencies  dispel  disappointment.  Camilla  is 
almost  a  sublimated  Radclifnan  heroine,  for  Madame 
D'Arblay  writes,  "A  fine  country,  and  diversified  views, 
may  soften  even  the  keenest  affliction  of  decided  misfor- 
tune, and  tranquillize  the  most  gloomy  sadness  into  resig- 
nation and  composure;  but  suspense  rejects  the  gentle 
palliative."  Mrs.  Berlinton  of  romantic  sentiment  with  a 
copy  of  Collins  from  which  she  is  reading  an  ode  shows 
that  Madame  D'Arblay  was  susceptible  to  the  Radcliffian 
breeze  that  was  blowing  at  the  time  of  the  composition  of 
Camilla.  At  Southampton  there  is  a  culminating  series 
of  small  tragic  episodes  such  as  sweep  one  on  to  Jane 
Austen's  territory.  A  bull-dog  becomes  much  interested 
in  Edgar  and  Melmond.  Haider  and  Lord  Vilhurst  make 
an  attack  on  a  bath-house.  A  waiter  is  switched  in  public. 
Yachting  and  dancing  constitute  the  life  of  insipid  women 


162  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  men.  A  forced  marriage  takes  place  when  Bellamy 
makes  Eugenia  believe  that  he  will  kill  himself,  if  she  does 
not  go  to  the  altar  with  him.  Melodrama  becomes  bathos 
as  the  reader  with  Camilla  looks  at  the  blood-stained  body 
of  Bellamy  to  rejoice  that  Eugenia  is  a  widow.  Melmond, 
having  learned  the  difference  between  a  beautiful  face 
in  front  of  a  marred  mind  such  as  Indiana  possessed  and  a 
pitted  face  behind  which  was  a  soul  not  contracted  at  the 
center,  was  glad  to  fling  aside  Indiana  to  take  Eugenia 
whom  he  had  at  first  rejected.  Indiana  marries  Macder- 
sey,  the  light  counterpart  of  herself;  and  Edgar,  notwith- 
standing all  that  Dr.  Marchmont  his  adjuster  and  adviser 
had  said  against  Camilla,  finally  decides  to  take  in  wedlock 
this  bundle  of  sensibility,  this  bucket  of  tears,  this  well 
full  of  faintings,  shudderings,  and  deliriums.  Camilla  and 
Cecilia,  so  far  as  the  tragedy  of  being  misunderstood  is 
concerned,  are  the  forerunners  of  Fanny  Price  and  Anne 
Elliot. 

From  1802  to  18 12  Madame  D'Arblay  was  in  France 
where  undisturbed  in  any  way  by  the  course  of  political 
movements  she  seems  to  have  been  able  to  complete  one 
half  of  The  Wanderer;  or  Female  Difficulties,  which,  after 
her  return  to  England,  was  finished  and  published  in  five 
volumes  in  18 14.  This  novel,  if  it  is  not  so  good  as 
Evelina  or  Cecilia,  is  superior  to  Camilla.  There  is  acceler- 
ated motion  as  one  flits  with  Ellis,  the  fair  incognita, 
from  France  to  Dover  and  to  Brighthelmstone,  where 
Elinor  Joddrel  with  new  systems  on  education,  religion, 
and  the  rights  of  women,  acquired  from  imbibing  French 
revolutionary  doctrines,  proposes  to  Albert  Harleigh  in 
the  presence  of  the  beautiful  incognita  who,  to  prevent 
Elinor's  poniarding  herself,  says  that  she  never  can  accept 
the  hand  of  Harleigh.  Albert,  thinking  that  it  was  a  ruse 
on  the  part  of  Ellis,  is  sure  that  he  has  won  the  heart  of 
the  wanderer  and  with  consternation  receives  the  surprise- 


Frances  Burney's  "The  Wanderer"     163 

blow  of  the  ultimatum  delivered  by  the  incognita  who 
would  have  him  flee  her  presence  as  one  would  flee 
destruction. 

The  reader  is  hurried  on  to  Vanbrugh  and  Cibber's 
The  Provoked  Husband  put  on  as  a  private  theatrical  to 
which  Sussex  ladies  and  gentlemen  have  been  invited  to 
see  Ellis  assume  the  part  of  Lady  Townley.  She  proved 
to  be  such  a  good  actress  that  certain  gentlemen  fell  in 
love  with  her;  and  Lord  Melbury's  attack  on  Ellis  is  as 
good  a  piece  of  guesswork  as  the  tense  Act  III  in  Pinero's 
The  Gay  Lord  Quex;  for  in  each  of  these  great  scenes  we 
do  not  know  whether  the  girl  to  preserve  herself  from 
a  rake  is  going  to  ring  the  bell  or  not.  To  save  herself, 
Ellis  flees  from  her  fast  manoeuvring  lovers  to  set  herself 
up  as  a  professor  of  music.  She  possesses  a  good  voice, 
but  fares  worse  than  Mirah  in  Daniel  Deronda.  In  a 
hotel  concert  room  the  crazed  Elinor  in  disguise  advances 
before  the  audience  to  stab  herself  in  order  to  have  the 
pleasure  of  having  Ellis  witness  a  sought-for  death  in 
Harleigh's  arms.  The  desire  on  the  part  of  a  girl  to  die 
in  the  arms  of  the  man  she  loves  seems  to  have  been  in 
the  air.  The  suspected  wife  dies  in  her  husband's  arms  in 
this  manner  in  Mrs.  Opie's  Valentine's  Eve  (1816);  Emily 
Arundel  dies  convulsively  in  Edward  Lorraine's  arms  in 
Letitia  Landon's  Romance  and  Reality  (1831) ;  and  Catha- 
rine Linton  has  her  last  conscious  moment  of  happiness 
and  of  agony  in  Heathcliff's  arms  in  Emily  Bronte's 
Wuthering  Heights  (1847). 

This  farcically  formal  Elinor  on  a  sick  bed  quoting 
"Glory,  Love,  .  .  .  and  Harleigh"  from  Addison's  Cato 
is  the  exponent  of  those  who,  at  that  time,  would  set 
aside  long,  old,  and  hereditary  prejudices  by  atheistical 
and  suicidal  doctrines.  In  a  delirium  of  delusions  she 
represents  those  who  lamented  that  stupid  rationality 
reigned  instead  of  Robespierre's  bodkins,  poniards,  and 


164  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


&j 


guillotines.  She  plays  splendidly  the  role  of  a  tragi- 
comedy queen.  She  is  Sophia  Lee's  frenzied  Ellinor 
playing  the  part  of  the  hysterical  Lady  Delacour  of  Maria 
Edgeworth's  in  the  disguise  of  Cherubina  of  Eaton  Bar- 
rett's novel  of  1 8 13.  Nursing  an  erroneous  idea  that  Juliet 
(Ellis)  and  Harleigh  intended  to  elope,  Elinor  is  seen 
shrouded  as  a  ghost  in  a  graveyard;  and,  when  detected 
by  Juliet  and  Harleigh,  flees  to  the  altar  in  the  church 
where  she  has  secreted  two  pistols  with  which  she  nearly 
kills  herself  so  that  the  lovers  can  have  "sweet  reciproca- 
tion." Possibly  Lady  Morgan's  The  Wild  Irish  Girl 
(1806)  in  which  the  hero  proposes  to  Glorvina  in  a  church- 
yard may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  production 
of  such  romantic  melodrama. 

This  fair  incognita  (Ellis- Juliet)  weeps  oftener  than 
Camilla  or  any  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroines  and  her  cheeks 
are  oftener  crimson  with  sensibility.  As  a  result  of  being 
continually  pursued  by  Lord  Melbury  and  Albert  Har- 
leigh she  flees  to  London,  to  Soho  to  her  beloved  Gabriella's 
arms  and  a  milliner's  shop.  It  is  at  this  time  that  the 
reader  from  the  lips  of  the  magnificent  old  beau  Sir 
Jaspar  learns  that  Juliet  may  possibly  be  the  daughter  of 
the  late  Lord  Granville  and  a  granddaughter  of  the  late 
Earl  of  Melbury.  And  while  pondering  over  the  legiti- 
macy of  the  birth  of  Juliet  and  as  to  whether  or  not  she  is  a 
married  woman,  the  reader  becomes  aware  that  the  im- 
pulsive heroine  has  abandoned  London  to  exhale  the 
"odoriferous  salubrity"  of  the  New  Forest.  On  a  hillock, 
Juliet,  chastened  by  the  loneliness  and  silence  of  the  gay 
luxuriance  of  scenery,  watches  the  zephyrs  "agitate  the 
verdant  foliage"  of  aged  oaks  whose  venerable  branches 
offer  shelter  from  the  storms  of  life.  She  looks  toward  the 
"benignant  west"  and  listens  to  the  "extatic  wild  notes 
of  the  feathered  race."  Nature,  reflection,  and  heaven 
were  all  her  own.     Nature  and  religion  become  one  in 


Frances  Burney's  "The  Wanderer"     165 

restoring  tranquillity  and  cheerfulness  to  this  troubled 
innocent.  Later,  after  a  Radcliffian  experience  in  a 
peasant's  hut  that  causes  Juliet  to  "bathe  her  bloody- 
hand  in  dew,"  Madame  D'Arblay  takes  the  heroine  into 
the  region  of  lonely,  mystic  beauty  in  the  neighborhood 
of  a  Gothic  church  around  which  is  blowing  a  ' '  salubrious 
breeze"  that  seems  to  be  permeated  with  the  primitive 
integrity  and  fragrant  serenity  of  the  well-disposed  rustics 
living  in  the  adjacent  parts.  At  this  place  Fanny  D'- 
Arblay would  show  that  English  farmers  are  oblivious 
of  the  beauties  of  nature.  After  a  careful  study  of  shep- 
herd life  in  rural  England  the  authoress  sees  no  earthly 
paradise  in  the  pastoral  walks.  Nature  is  zero  to  torpid 
swains.  No  one  can  enjoy  nature  in  the  country  unless 
one  goes  there  with  culture  and  money. 

At  last  we  are  ready  to  pick  up  volume  five  to  have  the 
mystery  of  Juliet  rapidly  explained  in  a  few  pages.  At  an 
inn  Juliet  is  seized  by  her  French  husband  in  the  presence 
of  Albert  Harleigh,  who  is  permitted  for  the  first  time  to 
comprehend  that  his  ideal  beauty  is  in  the  bonds  of  a 
hateful  marriage.  Juliet  is  rescued  from  her  husband  by 
the  humorous  old  beau  Sir  Jaspar,  to  whom  she  tells  the 
terrible  story  of  how  she  had  been  forced  to  marry  the 
French  commissary.  It  is  here  that  Madame  D'Arblay 
produces  the  guillotine.  We  see  the  executioner  holding 
aloft  the  head  of  one  unfortunate  victim.  Among  those 
who  are  bound  prepared  for  the  knife  is  the  good  bishop, 
the  brother  of  Juliet's  good  friend  the  Marchioness; 
and  in  order  to  save  him  Juliet  submits  to  a  hurly-burly 
French  Revolutionary  marriage.  After  this  marriage 
ceremony  she  had  succeeded  in  escaping  from  her  husband 
and  had  fled  to  England  in  the  manner  which  the  reader 
already  knows.  At  the  end  of  the  novel  this  dutiful  heroine 
is  ready  to  go  back  to  France  to  this  hated  husband  to 
save  the  bishop  who  seems  not  to  have  received  his  pass- 


166  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

port  to  safety  according  to  agreement.  All  at  once  the 
hurried  execution  of  her  husband  relieves  the  situation. 
Thus  the  "citoyenne  Julie,"  the  wanderer,  after  many 
female  difficulties,  having  been  proved  to  be  the  lawful 
half-sister  of  Lady  Aurora  Granville,  is  married  to  Har- 
leigh.  Poor  Elinor  resignedly  accepts  the  fate  of  unre- 
quited love,  since  she  had  been  won  over  by  Harleigh  to 
accept  a  belief  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave  and  was  no 
longer  the  wild  enthusiast  believing  in  "there  is  no  God" 
of  Robespierre.  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith  in  1792  in  Desmond 
had  balked  the  guillotine;  in  18 14  Madame  D'Arblay 
brings  us  to  the  scaffold,  but  we  do  not  actually  see  the 
knife  descend ;  and  it  was  not  to  descend  until  Bulwer  in 
1842  and  Dickens  in  1859  placed  under  it  the  necks  of 
Zanoni  and  Sidney  Carton. 

In  passing  from  Frances  Burney's  first  novel  to  the 
first  published  novel  of  Robert  Bage's,  one  is  compelled 
to  notice  that  Thomas  Holcroft  had  attempted  fiction  in 
Alwyn  (1780),  which  is  a  pastiche  of  Smollett  and  Fielding. 
This  Thomas  Holcroft  was  a  kind  of  an  English  Marat, 
an  electric  spark  illuminating  a  thin  bag  of  filth.  He  was 
a  revolutionary  who  extolled  free-thinking,  free-living, 
and  advocated  dancing  to  ca  ira  on  English  soil.  His 
radical  views,  socialistic  and  anarchistic,  were  the  result 
of  reading  Rousseau  and  plunging  into  studies  on  French 
social  theories.  Alwyn  was  followed  by  Anna  St.  Ives 
(1792)  and  Hugh  Trevor  (1794-97).  In  the  same  year  that 
his  doctrinaire  novel  Anna  St.  Ives  was  published,  there 
appeared  his  drama  The  Road  to  Ruin  wherein  is  old 
Dornton  the  banker  spoiling  his  son  by  alternate  indul- 
gence and  sternness.  As  a  dramatist  Holcroft  was  a 
success,  but  not  as  a  novelist.  His  helpfulness  to  English 
fiction  was  little  only  as  one  concedes  that,  without  his 
anarchistical  ideas,  the  great  William  Godwin  could  not 
have  promulgated  doctrines  antagonistic  to  the  noblesse 


Robert  Bage's  "Hermsprong"  167 

represented  by  the  moneyed  aristocrat  Falkland  in  Caleb 
Williams  (1794). 

The  novels  of  Robert  Bage  according  to  dates  of  pub- 
lication are  Mount  Henneth  (1781);  Barham  Downs 
(1784);  The  Fair  Syrian  (1787);  James  Wallace  (1788); 
Man  As  He  Is  (1792);  and  Hermsprong;  or,  Man  As 
He  Is  Not  (1796).  Hermsprong,  in  two  volumes,  has  been 
regarded  for  many  years  as  the  most  typical  production  of 
Bage's.  It  seems  to  the  present  writer  that  any  one  of  the 
other  novels  of  Bage  is  its  superior.  There  is  tediousness 
everywhere  in  dull  Devonshire  on  the  borders  of  Cornwall. 
There  is  a  Sir  Henry  Campinet  who,  at  the  age  of  sixty, 
becomes  Lord  Grondale.  There  are  three  girls,  Sir  Henry's 
daughter  Miss  Caroline,  a  Harriet  Sumelin,  and  a  Char- 
lotte Sumelin,  who  have  plenty  of  money  and  nothing  to 
do.  At  length  Miss  Caroline  finds  that  she  has  something 
to  do  to  save  her  own  life  at  a  ledge  of  rocks.  Her  pre- 
server is  Hermsprong,  the  great  discourser  on  comparative 
happiness  and  the  rights  of  man.  All  at  once  Lord 
Grondale  becomes  Hermsprong's  enemy.  When  volume 
two  is  opened  there  stalks  forth  the  figure  of  Sir  Philip 
Chestrum,  who  seems  to  be  violently  in  love  with  Miss 
Caroline.  The  reader  then  is  told  that  Miss  Caroline  will 
lose  her  fortune,  if  she  marries  Hermsprong ;  and  that  she 
will  get  it  all,  if  she  marries  Sir  Philip.  Caroline  rejects 
Philip ;  then  the  awe-inspiring  picture  is  presented  of  Lord 
Grondale  striking  his  daughter,  preferring  this  kind  of 
blow  to  that  of  riveting  her  to  the  man  he  most  detests. 
Hermsprong  is  then  accused  of  being  a  spy  and  a  prime 
mover  of  the  late  sedition  and  riot.  Denouement — 
Hermsprong  is  ascertained  to  be  the  son  of  Sir  Charles 
Campinet,  elder  brother  of  Lord  Grondale.  Hermsprong's 
uncle  is  quickly  removed  by  means  of  a  dishonorable 
death.  The  estate  and  Caroline  are  thrown  into  the  arms 
of  Hermsprong.    The  whole  novel  is  a  thing  of  shreds  and 


168  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


&j 


patches,  and  it  is  to  Barhatn  Downs  that  the  reader  must 
turn  to  see  Bage  at  his  best. 

Robert  Bage  in  Barham  Downs  (1784),  which  is  in  the 
form  of  letters,  gives  us  such  natural  characters  as  Justice 
James  Whitaker  and  his  two  daughters  Peggy  and  Anna- 
bella,  Lord  Winterbottom,  Sir  Ambrose  Archer,  Mr. 
Delane  the  parson,  Thomas  Parrett  the  keeper  of  St. 
George,  and  Polly  Parrett  his  plump,  black-eyed  daughter. 
Annabella  in  one  place  in  the  novel  lies  concealed  in  her 
father's  closet  for  a  long  period,  by  this  method  making 
her  father  think  that  she  had  run  away  from  home  in 
order  to  escape  Lord  Winterbottom.  Later,  after  a 
month's  stay  in  Lord  Winterbottom 's  house,  she  comes 
forth  quite  untainted  by  the  atmosphere;  and,  as  one 
further  pursues  her,  he  gets  good  glimpses  of  fashionable 
resorts  and  bits  of  London  high-life  as  he  paces  by  her 
side  to  see  her  at  length  tumble  headlong,  in  spite  of  her 
father's  wishes,  into  the  marital  arms  of  Sir  George  Os- 
mond. But  it  is  not  in  the  story  of  these  individuals  that 
Bage  proves  himself  a  talented  novelist.  It  is  rather  in 
the  sad  story  Kitty  Ross  told  to  Isaac  Arnold,  the  shrewd 
Quaker,  of  how  she  was  ruined  at  the  hands  of  the  honor- 
able Mr.  Corrane  that  there  is  the  realization  of  a  move- 
ment of  revolutionary  ideas  on  woman's  honor  and  the 
marriage  problem.  Kitty  relates  how  she  was  betrayed, 
and  the  auditor  is  a  Quaker  as  shrewd  as  Defoe's  William 
Walters.  This  kindly  Isaac  Arnold  is  the  author,  Bage 
in  disguise,  who  would  reconstruct  a  girl's  life  without 
consulting  society.  He  philosophically  shows  that  a 
woman  with  a  past  can  rehabilitate  herself  in  another 
country,  and  that  sometimes  this  restored  honor  can  safely 
pass  muster  even  if  the  woman  comes  back  to  the  land 
that  knows  her  past.  Bage  makes  one  realize  in  a  startling 
manner  how  a  betrayed  woman  can  be  honest,  remain 
pure,  and  thereby  regain  a  place  in  respectable  society. 


Robert  Bage's  "Barham  Downs"       169 

After  Mr.  Arnold  had  heard  all  that  Kitty  had  to  tell 
him,  he  placed  her  in  the  keeping  of  a  family  in  Dublin, 
thus  making  it  possible  for  her  to  become  not  only  the 
best  woman  in  Ireland,  but  the  happiest  woman  in  England 
when  she  married  Mr.  William  Wyman. 

It  was  by  this  introduction  of  such  a  daring  theme  that 
Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith  could  venture  to  portray  in  a  deli- 
cate manner  the  purity  of  the  love  that  Mrs.  Geraldine 
Verney,  a  married  woman,  had  for  Mr.  Desmond  in 
Desmond  (1792).  The  repentance  of  the  honorable  Mr. 
Corrane  when  he  was  dying  at  St.  Lucia,  and  the  legacy 
of  two  thousand  pounds  left  by  him  to  Kitty,  show  the 
"Let  this  expiate!"  of  Richardson's  Lovelace.  It  was 
such  a  novel  as  Barham  Downs  that  possibly  caused  Mary 
Brunton  to  write  Self-Control  (1810)  which  closes  with 
a  dying  rascal  repentantly  writing  from  foreign  parts. 
Bage  sees  everything  from  the  easy-going  foreigner's 
liberal  point  of  view  in  regard  to  woman ;  and  his  ideas  at 
the  time  he  wrote  were  regarded  as  inimical  to  any  code 
of  morality,  especially  when  he  says,  "Thy  error,  Kitty, 
is  of  little  magnitude, "  and  aids  her  in  retrieving  herself 
by  averring  that,  when  no  one  knows  when  honor  is  lost, 
honor  never  has  been  lost  at  all.  Everything  is  kept  under 
cover  and  that  is  why  Kitty  emerges  as  a  respectable 
member  of  society.  Bage  in  1784  anticipated  the  French 
Revolutionists  in  carrying  aloft  the  fallen  woman,  and 
endeavored  to  inculcate  the  idea  that  the  social  unit, 
instead  of  killing  her,  should  give  her  another  chance. 

While  Bage  was  producing  novels  there  appeared  The 
Recess;  or  a  Tale  of  Other  Times  (1783-86)  of  Sophia  Lee's 
which  in  many  respects  is  similar  to  Scott's  Kenilworth 
(1821).  Matilda,  the  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk 
and  Mary  Stuart,  and  the  twin  sister  of  Ellinor's,  like 
Amy  Robsart,  was  secretly  married  to  Lord  Leicester. 
Only  once  was  Matilda  permitted  to  see  the  matchless 


170  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

beauty  of  her  mother  who  had  been  imprisoned  for  eigh- 
teen years.  At  Coventry  through  a  grated  window  the 
reader  sees  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  walking  in  the  garden 
with  her  arms  around  the  necks  of  the  two  attendant  maids. 
In  pale  purple  the  Queen  moves  regally  in  suffering  and 
resignation,  bearing  well  her  only  ornaments — the  beads 
and  the  cross.  Matilda  and  Ellinor  receive  one  blessed 
look  from  the  fine  eyes  that  fail  to  recognize  the  daughters ; 
and  the  reader,  as  Matilda  swoons  in  her  sister's  arms,  in 
imagination  passes  from  this  prison  at  Coventry  to  the 
fair  face  seen  in  Lochleven  Castle  when  Lindesay  forces 
Mary  to  abdicate  the  throne  of  Scotland  in  Scott's  The 
Abbot. 

Then  Sophia  Lee  carries  one  to  Kenil worth  Castle  in 
which  Queen  Elizabeth  is  holding  court.  In  the  hall, 
adorned  with  high-arched  Gothic  windows  through  which 
can  be  seen  a  beautiful  lake  covered  with  ornamented 
boats,  moves  the  haughty,  smiling,  sharp-eyed  Elizabeth. 
The  onlooker  examines  the  countenance  of  the  amiable 
Sidney  and  the  troubled  features  of  the  great  Leicester. 
Along  with  Matilda  the  reader  leaves  this  room  of  purple 
drapings  fringed  with  gold  and  the  statues  to  go  to  the 
grotto  inlaid  with  shells  and  mirrors  to  see  the  Nereids 
receive  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  (Queen  Elizabeth)  as  she 
comes  to  them  seated  on  a  throne  in  a  boat  scooped  out 
like  a  shell.  The  scene  reminds  one  of  that  in  which 
Queen  Elizabeth  suddenly  stumbles  upon  Amy  Robsart 
in  the  grotto  in  Kenilworth. 

Then  comes  unhappiness  at  Elizabeth's  court.  Matilda 
is  compelled  to  flee  to  the  Recess  which  opportunely  is 
revealed  by  a  heaven-sent  flash  of  lightning.  Hard  upon 
the  news  of  the  death  of  Mary  Stuart,  Queen  Elizabeth  is 
seen  in  one  of  her  tantrums  hitting  Ellinor  on  the  temple 
with  a  violently  flung  book.  Ellinor,  though  loving  Essex, 
had  been  forced  to  marry  Lord  Arlington.     Upon  being 


Sophia  Lee's  "The  Recess"  171 

sent  to  the  block  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  Essex  had  given  his 
final  blessing  to  Ellinor.  In  consequence  of  this  dastardly- 
deed  of  Elizabeth's  Ellinor  lost  her  reason,  and  in  madness 
one  night  glided  into  the  closet  to  confront  and  denounce 
Elizabeth  for  the  murder  of  Essex.  This  denunciation  of 
Elizabeth  by  mad  Ellinor  anticipates  by  forty  years  the 
strength  of  the  great  denunciation  of  Leicester  by  angry 
Elizabeth  in  Kenilworth.  Mad  Ellinor  disappears  from  the 
novel  in  a  very  sensational  manner,  dying  in  front  of  the 
picture  that  represented  Essex  at  the  storming  of  Cadiz. 

Matilda  with  her  daughter  Mary  after  many  sad 
wanderings  returned  from  France  to  England,  hoping  to 
marry  this  girl  of  hers  to  Henry,  the  son  of  James  I. 
But  Mary  became  a  widow  ere  yet  a  wife  by  Henry's 
early  death.  Then,  in  ecstasy  of  domestic  joy  of  anticipa- 
tion of  favors  from  an  interview  with  James  I,  Matilda 
dressed  up  her  Mary  to  go  before  the  monarch.  The 
coach  in  which  mother  and  daughter  were  riding  was  not, 
however,  driven  to  court,  but  to  prison.  Thus  Matilda 
unexpectedly  awaked  from  her  dream  of  bliss  to  be 
plunged  into  the  utmost  woes  of  maternal  pathos.  It  at 
length  is  revealed  that  this  daughter  Mary  by  reason  of 
her  connection  with  Somerset  had  been  responsible  for  the 
death  of  Henry,  and  retributive  justice  forced  this  grand- 
daughter of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  and  Mary  Stuart  to 
find  death  in  the  arms  of  her  mother  Matilda  who  sub- 
sequently died  of  a  broken  heart  in  France,  where  her 
own  mother  had  once  been  extremely  happy.  Thus 
Sophia  Lee  shows  the  force  of  heredity  which  carries  us 
back  to  Moll  Flanders,  the  daughter  of  a  criminal.  Ma- 
tilda's daughter  had  the  ill-fated  Stuart  blood  in  her  veins. 

Sophia  Lee  then  deserves  recognition,  even  though  she 
moves  miserably  in  history,  because  there  had  been  no 
historical  novel  of  note  since  Thomas  Leland's  Longsword, 
Earl  of  Salisbury  (1762),  and  for  the  contribution  of  a 


172  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

mad  heroine  and  for  the  use  she  made  of  the  law  of 
heredity.  As  Susan  E.  Ferrier  in  a  small  way  went  over 
the  Scott  territory  of  studies  in  Scotch  life,  and  because 
of  this  can  be  considered  a  poor  after-runner  of  Scott,  so 
Sophia  Lee  as  a  poor  forerunner  of  Scott  went  over  his 
historical  territory,  making  it  possible  for  him  to  erect 
Kenilworth  Castle  on  the  ruins  of  the  same  structure  as 
seen  in  The  Recess. 

In  passing  from  Sophia  Lee  to  William  Beckford  there 
is  Sandjord  and  Merton  (1783-89)  that  was  written  by 
that  eccentric  Thomas  Day,  who,  by  imposing  the  educa- 
tional system,  inspired  by  Rousseau,  upon  the  young  girl 
that  he  had  adopted  and  was  training  in  his  own  house- 
hold with  the  view  of  eventually  making  her  his  wife, 
lost  her  by  the  mistake  of  a  muslin  dress.  Sandjord  and 
Merton  was  not,  however,  written  for  this  girl,  but  was 
written  for  the  purpose  of  inculcating  manliness  in  any 
British  boy  by  sending  him  back  to  study  the  simplicity 
of  his  own  nature  and  that  of  the  external  world.  The 
good  Mr.  Barlow  and  young  Harry  Sandford  at  last 
succeeded  in  developing  the  spoiled  Tommy  Merton  into 
a  perfect  character.  Thomas  Day's  high  educational 
ideal  which  was  attained  by  Tommy  Merton  seems  to 
have  been  this,  that  it  is  better  "to  be  useful  than  rich 
or  fine, ' '  and  that  it  is  far  better  "to  be  good  than  to  be 
great."  Another  noticeable  feature  of  the  book  is  the 
figure  of  ' '  the  honest  Black ' '  who  emerges  as  a  hero  in  the 
bullfight  to  project  the  reader  past  Maria  Edgeworth's 
story  The  Grateful  Negro  (1802)  to  Harriet  Martineau's 
The  Hour  and  the  Man  (1840). 

Vathek  is  an  oriental  tale  "before  which, "  as  Lord  Byron 
has  said,  "even  Rasselas  must  bow."  William  Beckford 
hurriedly  wrote  the  novel  in  French  in  1782,  and  contrary 
to  his  injunction  it  was  published  in  English  in  1786  by  the 
Reverend  Samuel  Henley.     After  Vathek  was  published, 


William  Beckford's  "Vathek"  173 

William  Beckford  at  Fonthill  Abbey  was  shunned  by 
those  living  outside  his  high  walls.  People  gradually 
spread  the  rumor  that  he  was  like  his  own  Giaour,  and 
that  he  was  guilty  of  all  the  sins  committed  by  his  Caliph. 
After  1822  when  he  retired  to  Bath  to  Lansdowne  House, 
which  had  a  tower  that  he  erected  to  the  height  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  feet,  and  which  had  a  magnificent 
museum  containing  works  of  art,  and  an  adjacent  garden 
adorned  with  beautiful  statuary,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  even  the  poet  Tennyson,  who  had  become  sus- 
ceptible to  the  public  opinion  of  that  day,  deemed  him 
as  a  kind  of  superman  or  Gottmensch  typifying  that  art 
culture  which  is  all  failure,  when  a  dilettante  sits  in  his 
gallery  or  at  the  top  of  his  tower  as  a  god  "holding  no 
form  of  creed,  but  contemplating  all."  To-day,  however, 
thanks  to  the  studies  of  Lewis  Melville,  we  know  that  all 
these  evil  reports  about  Beckford  were  without  founda- 
tion and  that  he  was  a  noble  artist,  never  at  any  time  liv- 
ing sans  moral  obligations.  In  Beckford's  masterpiece, 
Caliph  Vathek  and  the  princess  Nouronihar  gave  them- 
selves up  completely  to  the  pleasures  of  the  sense  world. 
Eblis  and  the  accursed  Dives  lured  the  two  sinners  on  to 
the  entrance  of  the  infernal  world  beyond  the  mountains 
of  Istakar.  From  the  seventh  heaven  not  even  Mahomet 
by  the  music  of  the  good  genius  could  from  these  portals 
turn  back,  "the  one,  with  the  thousand  of  the  blackest 
crimes,  the  thousand  projects  of  impious  ambition,  .  .  . 
the  other  with  the  desolation  of  her  family  and  the 
perdition  of  the  amiable  Gulchenrouz."  All  their  goodness 
of  heart  had  died  away  with  the  sad  strains  of  the  flute. 
The  doom  of  Vathek  and  Nouronihar  is  unshunnable. 
When  in  the  hall  of  Eblis  we  see  the  unfortunate  couple 
putting  their  hands  over  their  hearts,  in  which  are  visible 
terrible  bonfires  fanned  by  the  breezes  of  their  past  vol- 
uptuous loves,  there  is  the  realization  that  for  similar 


174  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

workings  of  wicked  human  hearts  we  must  wait  until  in 
Hawthorne's  Scarlet  Letter  there  comes  along  the  scene 
in  which  little  Pearl  throws  burs  from  the  graveyard  at 
the  breast  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  who  instinctively  puts 
his  hand  over  his  heart,  into  the  crystal  of  which  Roger 
Chillingworth  at  his  side  for  some  time  has  been  looking 
and  adding  fuel  to  the  flames,  which  are  burning  it  up  as 
well  as  his  own  in  endless  misery. 

In  the  same  year  that  Vathek  was  published,  Dr.  John 
Moore  sent  forth  Zeliico  which  he  warned  everybody  not 
to  read.  By  this  clever  ruse  the  public  for  a  time  centred 
its  attention  upon  the  villain  Zeluco,  who  carried  tragedy 
with  him  wherever  he  went  in  Sicily,  Madrid,  and  in 
Cuba.  In  Havana  this  cruel  and  avaricious  Sicilian  was 
an  inhuman  slaveholder,  believing  that  the  Bible  author- 
izes slavery.  His  whole  career  up  to  the  time  that  he  re- 
turned to  Palermo  and  Naples  had  been  that  of  a  breaker 
of  women's  hearts.  The  scene  of  his  last  and  worst  crime 
was  at  Naples  where  he  made  love  to  Laura,  the  daughter 
of  Madame  de  Seidlits.  This  heroine  for  a  time  repelled 
his  advances.  Zeluco  tried  to  enlist  the  services  of  the 
church  in  this  matrimonial  venture  and  was  aided  by  a 
monk  who  subtly  helped  him  to  save  Laura  from  manu- 
factured banditti  on  the  slopes  of  Vesuvius.  By  the  loss 
of  the  Seidlits  money  Laura  was  compelled  to  change  her 
tactics  to  please  her  own  mother  and  the  church,  and 
reluctantly  consented  to  be  married  privately  to  the 
scoundrel  to  whom  she  shortly  bore  a  son.  Nerina,  a 
wicked  wench,  so  contrived  circumstantial  evidence  as 
to  make  the  monster  Zeluco  believe  that  his  boy  was 
not  his  babe  but  the  child  of  Laura  and  Captain  Seidlits, 
his  wife's  half-brother.  Then  the  melodramatic  scene  is 
presented  of  Zeluco  in  the  act  of  strangling  to  death  his 
little  son  in  the  presence  of  his  wife.  As  a  breaker  of 
women's  hearts  Zeluco  lends  clarity  to  the  characteriza- 


Dr.  John  Moore's  "Zeluco"  175 

tion  of  Thomas  Hope's  Greek  cut-throat  Anastasius, 
whose  atrocious  deeds  caused  the  death  of  his  darling 
boy  Alexis;  and  Moore's  monk,  who  astutely  contrived 
schemes  whereby  Zeluco  could  win  Laura,  faintly  fore- 
shadows the  diabolic  Ambrosio  of  Matthew  Lewis's  and 
the  terrible  Schedoni  of  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's.  Zeluco  in 
his  earlier  years  had  learned  the  art  of  murder  by  strang- 
ling a  sparrow.  In  George  Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  we  see 
young  Gwendolen  Harleth  strangling  a  canary  because  of 
its  disagreeable  voice,  and  by  such  an  act  learning  later 
how  to  strangle  her  husband  in  the  waters  of  the  Medi- 
terranean off  Genoa.  No  rope  could  be  thrown  by  Gwen- 
dolen to  Grandcourt  for  his  doom  had  been  arranged  at 
the  time  of  the  cruel  exit  of  the  canary. 

Dr.  Moore's  other  novels  Edward  (1796)  and  Mordaunt 
(1800)  have  become  half-forgotten  bits  of  inconsequential 
stuff;  but  Zeluco  is  still  read.  It  is  wholesome  to  note  the 
anti-revolutionary  idea  of  separation  instead  of  divorce 
extended  by  Dr.  Moore  to  the  women  of  the  year  1786. 
Laura  determined  to  bide  her  time  until  the  death  of 
Zeluco  so  that  Heaven  could  happily  marry  her  to  Baron 
Carolstein.  In  this  respect  Laura  is  the  prototype  of  Mrs. 
Geraldine  Verney  who  remained  faithful  to  her  brutal 
husband  until  his  death  freed  her  for  the  expectant,  wor- 
shiping, good  man  Desmond,  created  in  1792  by  Mrs. 
Charlotte  Smith. 

The  writings  in  fiction  of  the  reactionary  Mrs.  Char- 
lotte Smith  are  Emmeline,  the  Orphan  of  the  Castle  (1788) ; 
Ethelinde,  the  Recluse  of  the  Lakes  (1789) ;  Celestina  (1792) ; 
Desmond  (1792);  The  Old  Manor  House  (1793);  and  The 
Wanderings  of  Warwick,  The  Banished  Man,  and  Montal- 
bert,  which  were  published  between  1794  and  1795.  In 
1796  she  ceased  her  fictional  work  by  producing  her  last 
novel  Marchmont.  In  Desmond  the  French  Revolution  is 
discussed  by  the  characters,  but  it  does  not  involve  them 


176  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  its  thrilling  incidents.  In  this  respect  Mrs.  Charlotte 
Smith  lost  a  great  opportunity,  since  she  easily  could  have 
turned  the  novel  into  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities.  It  is  too  bad 
that  we  can  get  no  more  than  Month1  euri's  preachments 
on  the  Revolution  as  procuring  peasant  happiness,  and 
that  La  Guillotine  never  appears.  Desmond  loves  a 
married  woman  just  as  Charles  Dickens's  Sidney  Carton 
does,  and  always  flees  from  the  object  of  his  love  as  far 
as  he  is  able.  One  can  not  keep  from  asking  this  question : 
Did  the  drunken,  debauched  Verney  insulting  his  wife  and 
children  while  execution  on  chatties  is  going  on  in  his 
house  suggest  to  Dickens  the  dissolute  Sidney  Carton? 
After  Desmond  heard  of  the  total  ruin  of  Verney  he  has  a 
conference  with  Geraldine,  but  his  sober  judgment  and 
high  ideal  of  manhood  make  him  leave  Hertfordshire  for 
Bath  and  France.  Not  long  after  this,  as  Louis  and  Marie 
Antoinette  were  in  flight  to  Varennes,  Desmond  heard 
that  Verney  had  sold  his  wife  so  that  the  Due  de  Romagne- 
court,  like  a  Pollexfen,  could  carry  her  off  to  Paris.  It  is 
at  this  point  of  the  novel  that  Mrs.  Geraldine  Verney  in 
the  wildest  part  of  Auvergne  is  seen  stepping  forth  from  a 
chaise  to  enter  a  solitary  posthouse  filled  with  fierce 
banditti,  male  and  female,  who  were  the  agents  of  the 
Due  de  Romagnecourt ;  and,  as  Geraldine  was  about  to  be 
killed  by  a  long  knife  in  the  hands  of  a  terrible-eyed 
beldame,  a  figure  covered  with  blood  rushed  into  the  room, 
staggered  toward  the  chimney  and  fell  at  her  feet.  Then 
another  form  entered  the  room  recognizable  as  Lionel 
Desmond,  who  has  gallantly  rescued  the  heroine  by  pis- 
toling the  banditti.  As  has  already  been  suggested  this 
scene  reminds  us  of  Count  Fathom  when  he  escaped  from 
the  banditti  in  the  solitary  cottage  on  the  road  to  Paris, 
of  Mary  amid  flashes  of  lightning  rescued  by  Alleyn  in  the 
ruined  abbey  from  the  outlaws  in  Mrs.  RadclifTe's  The 
Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne  (1789);  and  by  it  we  are 


Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith's  "Desmond"     177 

prepared  for  a  similar  scene  in  the  cave  of  the  pirates  in 
The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  (1794).  The  novel  closes  with 
the  death  of  the  brute  Verney  and  with  Desmond  im- 
patiently awaiting  the  end  of  his  year  of  probation  so  that 
he  can  be  married  to  the  angelic  widow. 

Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith  in  this  novel  shows  that  the 
nobility  in  England  believed  that  a  counter-revolution  in 
France  would  severely  punish  the  canaille  and  set  all  to 
rights.  She  hints  at  the  fact  that  no  woman  in  distress  in 
England  could  gain  a  living  as  a  beggar  on  the  street 
because  at  once  it  would  be  thought  that  she  had  come 
from  France.  Lionel  was  set  down  as  a  country  squire  for 
taking  sides  with  the  revolution.  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith 
wished  for  the  success  of  a  cause  which,  as  she  saw  it  in  its 
consequences,  involved  the  freedom  and  the  happiness, 
not  merely  of  a  great  people,  but  of  the  universe.  She 
clearly  depicts  a  priest-trodden  people.  She  did  not 
believe  that  the  church  had  any  right  to  extort  money 
from  ignorant  peasants  to  keep  alive  aching  hearts  behind 
stone  walls.  Mrs.  Smith  points  to  Montrleuri  as  an  ideal 
chdteau-er  whose  menial  system  was  fine,  since  the  deserted 
convent  was  put  to  use  as  an  abode  for  the  superannuated. 
She  portrays  a  count  who  had  determined  to  leave  France 
because  the  drawing  of  his  great  genealogical  tree  had  been 
pruned  of  all  its  visionary  honors  by  the  National  Assem- 
bly. Mrs.  Smith  is  fearless  enough  to  state  that  Burke's 
Thoughts  on  the  Revolution  could  be  regarded  as  "a  trea- 
tise in  favor  of  despotism,  written  by  an  Englishman." 
Through  the  mouth  of  the  puppet  character  Montfleuri 
Mrs.  Smith  eloquently  defends  the  doctrines  of  the 
Revolutionists.  Her  boldness  of  1792  makes  for  a  realiza- 
tion of  what  it  meant  for  William  Godwin  to  be  forced  to 
withdraw  his  revolutionary  and  sanguinary  preface  to  the 
first  edition  of  Caleb  Williams  (1794).  By  1795  Godwin 
felt  that  he  was  in  no  danger  of  being  regarded  as  a  traitor, 


178  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  so  the  preface,  finding  no  opposition,  was  printed  in 
the  second  edition  of  Tilings  As  They  Are  (1796). 

In  The  Old  Manor  House  the  heroine  is  Monimia  an 
orphan  who  since  the  age  of  four  had  been  taken  care  of 
by  her  great-aunt  Mrs.  Lennard  at  Rayland  Hall,  which 
was  occupied  by  its  owner  Mrs.  Rayland,  the  only  survivor 
of  the  three  co-heiresses  of  Sir  Hildebrand  Rayland. 
Orlando,  the  youngest  son  of  Mr.  Somerive,  had  been 
Monimia's  playmate  at  the  Hall.  This  association  of 
Monimia  and  Orlando  was  frowned  upon  and  hindered 
as  much  as  possible  by  the  withered,  eccentric,  little  Mrs. 
Rayland,  who  boasted  that  her  family  blood  had  never 
except  in  one  case  mingled  itself  with  that  of  tradespeople, 
and  by  Mrs.  Lennard  who  possessed  the  wonderful  ability 
of  flinging  Billingsgate  into  the  ears  of  the  youthful  lovers. 
The  first  volume  of  the  novel  is  largely  filled  with  the 
clandestine  meetings  between  Orlando  and  Monimia  in 
the  octagon  turret.  Then  things  are  livened  up  a  little 
by  a  ghost  that  walks  in  the  chapel  that  can  say  "now- 
now, "  and  by  a  human  face  that  seems  to  be  a  super- 
natural agent  bent  on  disturbing  their  nocturnal  happiness. 
This  part  of  the  novel  is  illuminated  at  times  by  the  torch- 
light that  was  flourished  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  when  she 
wished  to  make  a  brilliant  excursion  into  the  crypts  of 
her  castles.  When  Orlando  captures  Jonas  Wilkins  and 
swings  him  into  the  light,  the  human  face  is  revealed  as 
that  of  this  smuggler. 

Monimia  is  an  unusually  quiet  and  demure  heroine,  at 
one  time  enduring  the  mutilation  of  her  arm  and  at  another 
time  scorching  both  arms  because,  forsooth,  she  had 
become  impervious  to  pain  by  reason  of  the  magic  of  the 
modulated  tones  of  her  lover's  voice.  At  this  juncture 
pressure  is  brought  to  bear  on  Orlando  so  that  he  is  com- 
pelled to  enlist  in  the  army  to  go  to  America  to  fight 
against   the   Colonists;   and,   in   Orlando's   agony   about 


Mrs.  Smith's  "Old  Manor  House"      179 

giving  up  Monimia,  the  reader  is  forced  into  depression  of 
spirits  along  with  the  hero.  As  the  moon  throws  a  long 
line  of  trembling  radiance  on  the  water,  Orlando  is  re- 
vealed in  front  of  a  forest  of  black  firs  attuning  himself  to 
the  dull  pausing  of  nature  in  November  to  relieve  himself 
by  delivering  an  autumnal  soliloquy  one  page  in  length. 
Mrs.  Smith  manages  the  pathetic  fallacy  with  some  skill 
so  that  the  reader  somehow  creates  within  himself  a 
somnolent  sympathy  for  Orlando  as  nature  shrouds  him 
with  a  solemnity  not  unpleasant,  since  it  comes  from  a 
mixture  of  the  dusk  of  sunset  and  moonlight.  It  furnishes 
a  recollection  of  Mary  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  The  Castles  of 
Athlin  and  Dunbayne  (1789),  when  she  received  the  back- 
ground of  a  "wood  whose  awful  glooms  well  accorded 
with  the  pensive  tone  of  her  mind." 

In  the  study  of  Orlando  as  he  is  on  the  way  to  America 
Mrs.  Smith,  pointing  to  the  ill-fed  soldiers  on  the  trans- 
ports, some  of  which  went  down  in  a  storm  because  of 
their  unseaworthiness,  blushes  for  an  ill-managed,  unjust 
war  which  England  was  waging  against  the  Colonies. 
When  Orlando,  who  served  with  General  Burgoyne,  was 
captured  by  the  Indians  to  be  saved  by  the  kindness  of 
Wolf-hunter,  a  sort  of  Oroonoko,  and  when  the  colonists 
were  scalped  and  killed  by  the  Indians  basely  employed 
by  the  British,  Mrs.  Smith  blushes  for  England's  tactics 
toward  her  own  flesh  and  blood.  In  this  novel  Mrs. 
Smith's  hostile  attitude  toward  her  bloody  countrymen, 
who  fought  against  the  Americans  simply  because  of  the 
King's  money,  is  an  echo  of  the  same  principles  that  were 
advocated  in  Desmond;  and  not  only  was  she  an  adverse 
critic  of  England's  political  ideas,  but  endeavored  within 
the  field  of  her  own  profession  to  write  novels  that  would 
be  an  antidote  to  the  poison  of  the  soft  semblance  of 
refined  sentiment  extant  in  novels  which  were  apologies 
for  suicide,  conjugal  infidelity,  the  derision  of  parental 


180  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

authority,  and  attacks  against  religion.  Moreover,  Mrs. 
Smith  was  wholly  unlike  Fanny  Burney  since  she  believed 
that  young  girls  of  that  time,  if  at  all  meditative,  should  never 
pick  up  the  hurtful  volumes  of  Richardson  and  Fielding. 

In  leaving  Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith,  I  am  firmly  convinced 
that  she  established  a  modern  tone  setting  for  the  natural 
description  of  the  external  world  as  early  as  1788.  When 
Emmeline,  the  orphan,  for  the  first  time  leaves  Mowbray 
Castle  in  Wales,  and  casts  one  longing,  lingering  look  be- 
hind from  the  chaise,  there  bursts  upon  her  sight  through 
the  gradually  withdrawing  autumnal  mists  a  perfect  blend 
of  the  circumstantial,  the  connotative,  and  the  impres- 
sionistic in  description. 

The  road  lay  along  the  side  of  what  would  in  England  be 
called  a  mountain;  at  its  feet  rolled  the  rapid  stream  that 
washed  the  castle  walls,  foaming  over  fragments  of  rock,  and 
bounded  by  a  wood  of  oak  and  pine,  among  which  the  ruins 
of  the  monastery,  once  an  appendage  to  the  castle,  reared  its 
broken  arches ;  and  marked  by  grey  and  mouldering  walls,  and 
mounds  covered  with  slight  vegetation,  it  was  traced  to  its 
connection  with  the  castle  itself,  still  frowning  in  gothic 
magnificence,  and  stretching  over  several  acres  of  ground:  the 
citadel,  which  was  totally  in  ruins  and  covered  with  ivy, 
crowning  the  whole.  Farther  to  the  West,  beyond  a  bold  and 
rocky  shore,  appeared  the  sea;  arid  to  the  East,  a  chain  of 
mountains  which  seemed  to  meet  the  clouds;  while  on  the 
other  side,  a  rich  and  beautiful  vale,  now  variegated  with  the 
mellowed  tints  of  the  declining  year,  spread  its  enclosures,  till 
it  was  lost  again  among  the  blue  and  barren  hills. 

In  the  year  1789,  when  Richard  Cumberland  produced 
Arundel,  which  was  followed  by  Henry  (1794),  *  both  of 

1  Saintsbury  says:  "Henry  is  Joseph;  Susan  May  is  a  much  more 
elaborate  and  attractive  Betty;  the  doctor's  wife  a  vulgarised  and  repulsive 
Lady  Booby;  Ezekiel  Daw,  whom  Scott  admired,  a  dissenting  Adams — the 
full  force  of  the  outrage  of  which  variation  Sir  Walter  perhaps  did  not  feel." 


Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "Highland  Story"      181 

which  were  written  in  direct  imitation  of  Fielding,  there 
was  published  in  London  by  T.  Hookham  a  small  volume 
entitled  The  Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne.  A  Highland 
Story.  The  novel  shows  not  the  influence  of  Fielding, 
but  the  influence  of  a  Horace  Walpole;  and  its  author, 
whose  name  was  not  on  the  title-page,  was  Mr.  William 
Radcliffe's  beautiful  young  wife,  who  had  been  born  in 
1764,  the  year  of  the  publication  of  The  Castle  of  Otranto. 
In  this  first  piece  of  fiction  Mrs.  Radcliffe  uses  the  word 
"gothic"  excessively.  It  was  not  a  new  word  for  it  had 
been  used  by  Swift  and  Steele  in  The  Tatler  (17 10),  by 
Fielding  in  the  description  of  the  palace  of  death  in  A 
Journey  from  this  World  to  the  Next  (1743),  and  it  had  been 
used  by  Thomas  Amory  in  John  Buncle  (1756)  and  by  the 
Reverend  Richard  Graves  in  The  Spiritual  Quixote 
(1772).  Mrs.  Radcliffe  in  A  Highland  Story  makes  things 
' '  gothically "  magnificent  on  a  small  scale,  such  as  when 
Alleyn  rescues  Mary  from  the  banditti  in  the  ruined 
abbey  amid  flashes  of  lightning ;  when  in  the  underground 
passage  he  grasps  the  cold  hand  of  a  corpse;  and  when 
the  Earl  from  the  terrace  contemplates  the  shipwreck  by 
moonlight.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  in  this  novel  gives  us  the 
type  of  heroines  who  were  to  be  in  all  her  subsequent 
fiction.  Mary  and  blue-eyed  Laura  are  auburn-tressed 
girls  who  anxiously  run  to  the  Lethe  of  Nature  to  dip 
therein  their  wounded  minds. 

A  Sicilian  Tale  (1790)  presents  a  study  of  Italian  life 
of  the  upper  classes  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
There  are  constantly  set  before  us  monastic  walls,  ban- 
ditti, jealousies,  stilettos,  and  death.  There  are  two  girls, 
Emilia  with  flaxen  hair  and  dark  blue  eyes  and  Julia  with 
dark  eyes  and  dark  auburn  hair  profusely  curled  about  her 
neck.  Both  of  these  girls  are  just  as  fond  of  poetry, 
refined  conversation,  and  the  sensibilities  of  polished  life, 
as  Mary  and  Laura  in  the  novel  previously  referred  to. 


182  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Julia  weeps  copiously  over  the  miniature  of  her  mother 
just  as  M.  St.  Aubert  in  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho  weeps 
over  the  miniature  of  his  sister,  the  Marchioness  de 
Villeroi.  Julia's  mother,  the  first  wife  of  the  Marquis  di 
Mazzini,  at  the  end  of  the  novel,  by  emerging  from  the 
south  tower  explains  all  the  mysterious  occurrences  in 
that  part  of  the  castle.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  likes  to  cloak 
identity  and  thereby  increase  suspense  as  in  the  case  of 
Adeline  whose  mystery  of  birth  is  not  revealed  until  one 
reaches  the  concluding  pages  of  The  Romance  of  the 
Forest.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  throws  the  same  mantle  about 
Laurentini  di  Udolpho  in  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho;  and 
we  are  fairly  taken  off  our  feet,  when  Ellena  di  Rosalba's 
mystery  of  birth  is  cleared  up  in  The  Italian.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  third  volume  of  The  Italian  the  reader 
still  is  confident  that  Ellena  di  Rosalba  is  Schedoni's 
daughter;  for  has  not  one  gazed  on  Schedoni's  features 
revealed  in  the  miniature,  which  Schedoni  to  his  con- 
sternation discovered  on  the  bosom  of  Ellena  when  he 
was  about  to  stiletto  her  as  she  lay  sleeping.  But  Ellena 
is  not  Schedoni's  daughter,  for  she  is  the  daughter  of 
his  brother,  the  lawful  Count  di  Bruno,  whom  Schedoni 
had  murdered  to  gain  an  estate  and  this  brother's  wife. 
These  revealments  in  the  fiction  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe  are 
always  kept  until  the  last  pages  of  her  two  and  three- 
decker  novels.  At  the  end  of  A  Sicilian  Tale  the  wicked 
Marquis  and  his  perfidiously  false  second  wife  Maria 
receive  retribution  for  their  ' '  lawless  indulgence  in  violent 
and  luxurious  passions. " 

The  two  volumes  of  A  Sicilian  Tale  are  full  of  groans 
more  than  thrice  repeated.  There  is  a  splendid  description 
of  a  shipwreck  in  a  storm  at  sea ;  and  in  the  second  volume 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  se'ttles  down  to  a  fervid  style  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  nature  that  was  her  greatest  gift  to  contemporaries 
and  successors.     Richly  poetic  is  such  a  passage  as  this : 


Mrs.  RadclifTe's  "Sicilian  Tale"        183 

The  rich  colouring  of  evening  glowed  through  the  dark 
foliage,  which  spreading  a  pensive  gloom  around,  offered  a 
scene  congenial  to  the  present  temper  of  her  mind,  and  she 
entered  the  shades.  Her  thoughts,  affected  by  the  surround- 
ing objects,  gradually  sunk  into  a  pleasing  and  complacent 
melancholy,  and  she  was  insensibly  led  on.  ...  A  group  of 
wild  and  grotesque  rocks  rose  in  semicircular  form,  and  their 
fantastic  shapes  exhibited  Nature  in  her  most  sublime  and 
striking  attitudes.  Here  her  vast  magnificence  elevated  the 
mind  of  the  beholder  with  high  enthusiasm.  Fancy  caught 
the  thrilling  sensation,  and  at  her  touch  the  towering  steeps 
became  shaded  with  unreal  glooms;  the  caves  more  darkly 
frowned — the  projecting  cliffs  assumed  a  more  terrific  aspect, 
and  the  wild  overhanging  shrubs  waved  to  the  gale  in  deeper 
murmurs.  The  scene  inspired  Madame  with  reverential  awe, 
and  her  thoughts  involuntarily  rose  "from  Nature  up  to 
Nature's  God." 

At  the  end  of  this  novel  there  is  an  ethical  tidbit  which 
is  to  be  found  at  the  end  of  each  one  of  Mrs.  RadclifTe's 
pieces  of  fiction.  To  the  innocent  the  enduring  of  mis- 
fortune is  but  a  trial  of  virtue.  All  those  who  have  not 
lead  in  their  consciences  to  drag  them  down  are  extricated 
from  their  difficulties  according  to  the  axiom  of  ethics 
that  right  doing  is  always  followed  by  right  being  and 
triumphantly  sing,  "0/  giorno  jelice!  "  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
who  was  much  influenced  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  style,  must 
have  been  thinking  of  these  ethical  after- thrusts,  when  he 
reminds  the  reader  who  has  perused  The  Heart  of  Mid- 
lothian that  the  course  of  the  iniquitous  great  is  not  to  be 
envied,  since  the  paths  of  humbler  characters,  who  have 
walked  in  rectitude,  are  those  of  peace. 

The  Romance  of  the  Forest  (1791)  presents  Adeline, 
another  blue-eyed,  dark  auburn-tressed  heroine  living 
in  the  forest  of  Fontainville  in  the  ruined  abbey  of  St. 
Clair,    which    somehow    resembles    Sir    Walter    Scott's 


184  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Wolfscrag  by  reason  of  its  isolation  and  its  tower  and 
occupant  the  melancholy  Pierre  de  la  Motte,  the  ruined 
gambler,  who  had  fled  to  its  recesses  to  escape  the  fever 
of  high-life  dissipation  in  Paris.  The  gloom  of  his  misery 
is  lifted  at  times  by  the  quips  and  cranks  of  his  valet 
Peter  who  is  as  firm  a  forager  for  victuals  as  Scott's 
Caleb  Balderstone.  Early  in  the  novel  we  stumble  upon  a 
skeleton,  and  at  the  end  we  are  confronted  by  a  burial- 
urn,  which  is  not  to  be  avoided  even  in  the  Alps.  There 
are,  however,  many  bright  clouds  that  float  over  the 
graveyard  from  which  leap  spectres  of  past  bad  lives. 
In  grief  and  solitude  Adeline  receives  comfort  from  a 
pet  fawn  that  lifts  the  reader  to  serenity  as  when  reading 
Wordsworth's  White  Doe  of  Rylstone.  Adeline  can  sing  a 
sonnet  sweetly  when  awake,  and  her  fondness  for  the 
pathetic  in  music  increases  so  much  that  one  is  not  at  all 
surprised  when  he  finds  her  singing  a  melancholy  air 
even  when  asleep.  She  is  a  beauty  who  is  at  all  times  the 
exponent  of  anything  but  dissimulation,  yet  for  the  pur- 
pose of  self-preservation  she  can  practise  deception  just 
as  Jeanie  Deans,  whose  characterization  is  made  incon- 
sistent by  Scott,  who,  having  portrayed  her  as  not  willing 
to  lie  to  save  her  sister's  honor  and  life,  makes  her  at 
Muschat's  Cairn  readily  tell  a  lie  to  Ratcliffe  to  save  her 
own  honor  and  life.  The  rejection  of  drugs  by  Adeline 
and  the  way  in  which  she  withstands  all  seductions  in  the 
seralgio  of  the  Marquis  de  Montalt  forecast  a  similar 
scene  in  Maturin's  The  Albigenses  (1824),  in  which  the 
beautiful  brunette  Genevieve  passes  triumphantly  through 
the  subjection  of  the  same  seductions  in  the  Saracenic 
seralgio  of  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse.  La  Motte  in  weakness, 
moving  in  the  net  of  the  machinations  of  the  Marquis,  is 
not  a  study  in  total  depravity,  but  serves  as  an  example 
of  slow  deterioration  caused  by  environment,  over  the 
ramparts  of  which  his  trembling  soul  can  not  climb.     In 


Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "Udolpho"  185 

his  going  down  the  steps  from  folly  to  vice,  he  serves  as  a 
prototype  of  George  Eliot's  Tito  Melema,  who  plunged 
with  a  conscience  absolutely  dead  into  the  abyss  at  the 
bottom  of  the  last  step  of  his  gradual  deterioration.  De 
la  Motte,  however,  is  more  like  Charles  Dickens's  Mr. 
Dombey,  since  he  is  able,  though  almost  morally  dead, 
to  come  back  to  life  thoroughly  rehabilitated.  He  barely 
escapes  the  Tito  Melema  fate  which  always  comes  to  one 
who  has  loved  pleasure  and  the  avoidance  of  the  disagree- 
able. This  man  La  Motte  perhaps  suggested  to  William 
Godwin  the  characterization  of  Reginald  St.  Leon  who 
went  much  farther  than  La  Motte  in  sacrificing  and 
murdering  those  he  loved  because  of  the  monomania  of 
gambling  and  multiplying  gold.  St.  Leon,  too,  lived  to 
learn  and  to  say,  ' ' My  life  was  all  a  lie." 

The  fourth  novel,  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  of  Mrs. 
Radcliffe's  presents  wonderful  effects  in  handling  tran- 
sitional scenery  which  reveals  the  beauties  of  nature  in 
Languedoc,  in  the  Pyrenees,  on  Mt.  Cenis,  along  the  banks 
of  the  Brenta,  the  Po,  and  among  the  Apennines.  Mrs. 
Radcliffe  also  conveys  the  sense  of  great  distance  in 
description;  and  in  the  temporal  effects  of  contrasting 
the  past  with  the  present  showing  that  years  have  elapsed 
since  happiness  moved  among  abandoned  colonnades,  she 
is  admirable.  In  the  contrivances  of  Gothicism,  Mon- 
toni's  locked-up  wife  is  an  improvement  upon  the  secreted 
wife  of  Mazzini's;  and  thus  the  two  Italian  husbands  were 
to  teach  an  English  husband  Rochester  in  Charlotte 
Bronte's  Jane  Eyre  how  to  imprison  a  wife.  Madame 
Montoni  melodramatically  dies  amid  peals  of  thunder. 
A  face  is  seen  in  bed  under  a  black  pall.  Later  we  find 
that  the  lineaments  of  this  face  are  those  of  a  pirate's. 
St.  Elmo  lights  are  seen  on  lances.  And  as  we  are  en- 
thralled by  The  Prove?ical  Tale  the  thought  comes  how 
similar  its  atmosphere  is  to  that  of  Washington  Irving's 


1 86  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

"The  Spectre  Bridegroom"  in  The  Sketch  Book.  As  Ludo- 
vico  is  reading  this  ghastly  Provencal  Tale  the  atmos- 
phere is  as  heavy  as  any  felt  swirling  in  Poe's  melancholy 
House  of  Usher;  and  indeed  it  is  so  dense  throughout 
the  entire  novel  that  it  is  felt  that,  if  we  dragged  from 
the  fungus-fog  festooning  the  ruined  galleries  and  di- 
lapidated rooms  the  inmates,  they  would  cease  breathing. 
We  seem  to  know  this  and  therefore  leave  them  alone 
in  the  gloomy  vapors.  There  are  jars  at  times,  as  when 
the  reader  feels  the  inartistic  transfer  of  Ludovico  from 
the  haunted  chamber  to  the  rendezvous  of  the  pirates 
who  have  Blanche  in  their  clutches.  In  characterization 
there  is  nothing  new  with  the  exception  of  Count  Morano, 
who  seems  to  be  ready  to  reform  his  life  for  the  woman  he 
loves,  unless  one  fancies  he  finds  something  novel  in  the 
figure  of  the  mad  Agnes  (Laurentini  di  Udolpho),  who 
thinks  that  Emily  is  the  avenging  ghost  of  the  March- 
ioness de  Villeroi.  The  best  scene  in  the  whole  novel  is 
that  which  portrays  this  mad  nun  dying  after  having  been 
pursued  for  twenty  years  by  the  spectres  of  conscience. 

In  Jane  Austen's  Northanger  Abbey  Catherine  Morland 
thinks  that  General  Tilney  is  a  Montoni,  and  modern 
readers  have  adversely  judged  the  good  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
by  clinging  to  opinions  formed  after  perusing  the  parody 
on  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho.  They  are  inclined  to 
believe  that  all  characters  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe  partake  of 
Montoni.  It  is  to  The  Italian,  or  the  Confessional  of  the 
Black  Penitents  that  readers  must  go  to  see  Gothicism  in 
the  grasp  of  the  graces  of  style  and  the  triumph  of  con- 
vincing characterization.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  never  surpassed 
the  delineation  of  Ellena  di  Rosalba,  the  Marchesa  di 
Vivaldi,  and  Schedoni  whose  mind  is  so  gloomy  that 
majestic  nature  was  not  able  to  penetrate  it  with  any  ray 
of  sunshine.  This  monk  Schedoni  plays  for  the  deteriora- 
tion of  a  woman's  soul.    With  cunning  reserve  he  tries  to 


Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "The  Italian"  187 

grasp  control  of  a  fluctuating  mind  which  always  tries  to 
keep  itself  within  the  field  of  the  safety  of  the  law.  In 
the  shades  of  the  cloisters  of  San  Nicolo,  as  the  organ  plays 
a  dirge,  the  cold  intellect  of  this  monster  tries  to  stifle 
conscience  by  sophistry.  Murder  is  fanned  into  action 
in  front  of  a  confessional  box.  He  puts  the  Marchesa 
into  a  squirrel-cage  and  with  indented  glides  coils  himself 
about  it,  mentally  manoeuvring  it,  so  that  it  turns  so  fast 
that  when  the  woman  leaves  the  cage  she  has  become 
imbued  with  such  snake-like  rascality  as  to  be  no  longer 
able  to  reject  his  plausible  falsehoods;  therefore,  she 
consents  to  the  murder  of  Ellena  which  is  to  take  place 
in  a  lone  house  far  away  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic. 
The  Marchesa's  mind  is  as  subtle  as  Schedoni's.  She 
logically  confutes  Schedoni  in  each  one  of  his  fallacies, 
but  is  unable  to  disentangle  herself  from  the  web  of  his 
seductive  sophistry.  Not  even  the  inscription  over  the 
confessional  box  in  black  letters  "God  hears  thee!"  or 
the  requiem  sounded  on  the  organ  can  cause  tears  of 
sorrow  but  only  tears  of  deterioration  to  flow  from  the 
eyes  of  the  guilty  Marchesa.  The  brisk  dialogue  presents 
characters  considering  earthly  nemesis  as  the  only  obstacle 
to  be  feared  on  the  road  to  murder,  thus  for  twenty  pages 
causing  the  reader  to  be  held  spellbound  as  if  in  a  mental 
gymnasium  watching  two  malignant  minds  engaging  in  a 
psychological  sparring  match.  When  at  the  end  of  the 
third  volume  Schedoni,  driven  to  bay  by  the  Inquisitors 
of  the  Church  whose  every  law  he  had  violated,  is  stretched 
on  the  mattress,  his  audacity  elicits  admiration  reminding 
us  of  Eugene  Sue's  Rodin;  and  after  he  passed  poison  to 
himself,  he  skilfully  managed  to  pass  it  on  to  his  enemy 
Nicola  in  order  to  carry  the  basilisk  satisfaction  of  revenge 
into  the  next  world. 

In  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  The  Italian  (1797)  Ellena  di  Rosalba 
about  to  take  the  veil  at  San  Stefano  serves  to  connect 


188  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Margaret  taking  the  veil  in  Thomas  Deloney's  Pleasant 
Historie  of  Thomas  of  Reading  (1596)  with  the  auburn- 
haired  Emily  Arundel  taking  the  veil  in  the  chapel  of  the 
convent  of  St.  Valerie  in  Letitia  Landon's  Romance  and 
Reality  (1831).  The  interrupted  marriage  ceremony  of 
Vincent;o  di  Vivaldi  and  Ellena  in  the  chapel  on  the 
shores  of  Lake  Celano  harks  back  through  Cecilia  (1782) 
to  The  Adventures  of  Emmera,  or  the  Fair  American 
(1767)  where  is  sensationally  revealed  the  full- winged 
villainy  of  Edgerton  by  Miss  Hervey,  who  cried  out  just 
as  the  clergyman  had  begun  the  marriage  ceremony  that 
Edgerton  had  a  wife.  After  altercation  and  denial  on 
Edgerton's  part  at  the  altar,  Miss  Hervey  unmasks  his 
wife  who  had  all  the  while  been  present  in  disguise.  It  is 
such  a  scene  as  this  that  hurries  us  on  to  similar  experi- 
ments such  as  are  made  at  the  close  of  Lady  Morgan's 
The  Wild  Irish  Girl  (1806),  in  Jane  Eyre  (1847),  and  in 
Charles  Reade's  Hard  Cash  (1863). 

Emily  Bronte  in  Wuthering  Heights  (1847)  was  in- 
debted for  minor  accessories  of  the  supernatural  to  The 
Romance  of  the  Forest.  When  Mr.  Lockwood  in  Catharine 
Earnshaw's  paneled  bed  peruses  the  marginal  notes  that 
Cathy  had  jotted  down  about  the  brutal  treatment  her 
deified,  black  hero  had  received  from  Hindley,  the  reader 
feels  that  Mr.  Lockwood  is  examining  the  manuscript 
which  Adeline  scrutinized  in  the  abbey  of  St.  Clair;  and, 
when  Mr.  Lockwood  in  his  dream  cuts  the  hand  of  the 
ghost-waif  (Catharine  Earnshaw  or  Catharine  Linton) 
on  the  pane  of  glass  in  order  to  detach  his  fingers  from  its 
icy  grasp,  the  reader  knows  that  Mr.  Lockwood  is  dream- 
ing the  dream  that  Adeline  dreamed  in  the  abbey. 

In  circumstantial  and  connotative  descriptions  of  na- 
tural scenery  which  in  sublimity  subjectively  supports 
heroines  and  heroes  in  the  agonizing  crises  of  their  careers, 
the  good  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe  is  superb.     By  the  poetical 


Mrs.  Radcliffe  as  a  Stylist  189 

beauties  of  landscape  all  her  heroines  are  inspired  with 
reverential  awe  so  that  their  thoughts  involuntarily  arise 
from  "Nature  up  to  Nature's  God."  No  matter  what 
past  afflictions  a  girl  has  had  she  can  be  chastened  of  them 
by  being  carried  to  the  Alps  or  the  Apennines  and  can  in 
these  regions  still  continue  to  revel  in  the  luxury  of  grief, 
for  the  anodyne  by  which  to  "soften  the  asperities  of 
affliction"  is  always  within  reach. 

Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe  possesses  a  clear  and  beautiful  style 
that  fringes  the  white  color  of  joy  with  jet.  As  her 
heroines  always  obtain  a  pleasurable  melancholy  from 
their  scenic  surroundings,  so  the  reader  secures  a  mournful 
happiness  from  the  language  with  which  she  exquisitely 
colors  emotions  and  moods.  If  Thomas  Amory  in  John 
Bunch  (1756)  had  not  written,  "It  is  a  vast  craggy 
precipice,  that  ascends  till  it  is  almost  out  of  sight,  and 
by  its  gloomy  and  tremendous  air,  strikes  the  mind  with 
a  horror  that  has  something  pleasing  in  it, "  and  if  Mrs. 
Charlotte  Smith,  in  Emmeline,  the  Orphan  of  the  Castle 
(1788)  had  not  written,  "Emmeline  in  silent  admiration 
beheld  this  beautiful  and  singular  scene  (a  defile  in  France 
on  the  Mediterranean  shore),  and  with  the  pleasure  it  gave 
her,  a  soft  and  melancholy  sensation  was  mingled,"  Mrs. 
Radcliffe  could  not  have  written  in  The  Castles  of  Athlin 
and  Dunbayne  (1789),  "the  soft  serenity  of  evening,  and 
the  still  solemnity  of  the  scene,  conspired  to  lull  her  mind 
into  a  pleasing  forgetfulness  of  its  troubles,"  and  Mrs. 
Charlotte  Lennox  in  Euphemia  (1790)  could  not  have 
written,  "The  awful  gloom  from  the  surrounding  shades, 
the  solemn  stillness,  inspired  a  soft  and  pleasing  melan- 
choly." And  if  Mrs.  Radcliffe  in  The  Romance  of  the 
Forest  (1791)  had  not  written: 

At  the  decline  of  day  she  quitted  her  chamber  to  enjoy  the 
sweet  evening  hour,  but  strayed  no  farther  than  an  avenue 


190  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

near  the  abbey  which  fronted  the  west.  She  read  a  little,  but 
finding  it  impossible  any  longer  to  abstract  her  attention  from 
the  scene  around,  she  closed  the  book,  and  yielded  to  the  sweet, 
complacent  melancholy  which  the  hour  inspired.  The  air  was 
still,  the  sun,  sinking  below  the  distant  hill,  spread  a  purple 
glow  over  the  landscape  and  touched  the  forest  glades  with 
softer  light.  A  dewy  freshness  was  diffused  upon  the  air.  As 
the  sun  descended,  the  dusk  came  silently  on,  and  the  scene 
assumed  a  solemn  grandeur.  .  .  . 

Letitia  Landon  in  Romance  and  Reality  (1831)  never  could 
have  written : 

It  was  now  the  shadowy  softness  of  twilight — that  one  Eng- 
lish hour  whose  indistinct  beauty  has  a  vague  charm  which 
may  compensate  for  all  the  sunshine  that  ever  made  glorious 
the  vale  of  Damascus;  and  as  she  emerged  from  the  yew-tree 
walk,  the  waving  wind  and  the  dim  light  gave  the  figures 
cut  in  their  branches  almost  the  appearance  of  reality,  and 
their  shadows  flung  huge  semblances  of  humanity  far  before 
them.  .  .  .  The  room  into  which  she  meant  to  go  fronted 
full  west.  The  sun  had  set  some  time,  and  his  purple  pagean- 
try, like  that  of  a  forgotten  monarch,  had  departed;  but  cne 
or  two  rich  clouds,  like  faithful  hearts,  retaining  the  memory 
of  his  gifts  to  the  last,  floated  still  on  the  air. 

The  language  of  Letitia  Landon's  is  at  times  almost  a 
replica  of  that  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's,  the  only  difference 
being  that  Letitia  Landon  is  more  of  a  colorist  going  to  a 
fatal  excess,  as  when  we  find  ourselves  amid  'red-rose 
leaves  falling  to  the  ground  like  rain '  as  Edward  Lorraine 
returns  home  to  find  Algernon  dead.  She  delights  too 
much  in  warm  crimson  sunsets  and  rich  rose  stains  falling 
on  the  wall  and  floor,  is  too  fond  of  purple  obscurities  and 
purple  twilights,  and  too  fond  of  a  "crimson  pelisse"  that 
"had  quite  illuminated  the  deck."  But  Letitia  Landon 
by  means  of  copying  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  style,  char- 


Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  Disraeli  191 

acterizations,  and  situations,  almost  emerged  as  a  feminine 
Keats  writer  of  prose  fiction.  She  lacks  the  masculinity 
of  restraint  that  makes  Mrs.  Radcliffe  one  of  the  greatest 
of  stylists  among  our  novelists.  It  was  the  sureness  of  this 
touch  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  who  knew  so  well  how  to  mingle 
the  lights  and  shades  of  darkness,  that  made  Disraeli  in 
1845  reveal  his  Sybil  in  the  habit  of  a  Religious  flashing 
her  dark  eyes  from  the  window  of  Marney  Abbey  "in 
the  rosy  sunset  and  twilight  star"  to  dazzle  the  eyes  of 
Egremont. 

The  divine  melody  ceased;  the  elder  stranger  arose;  the 
words  were  on  the  lips  of  Egremont,  that  would  have  asked 
some  explanation  of  this  sweet  and  holy  mystery,  when  in  the 
vacant  and  star-lit  arch  on  which  his  glance  was  fixed,  he 
beheld  a  female  form.  She  was  apparently  in  the  habit  of  a 
Religious,  yet  scarcely  could  be  a  nun,  for  her  veil,  if  indeed  it 
were  a  veil,  had  fallen  on  her  shoulders,  and  revealed  her  thick 
tresses  of  long  fair  hair.  The  blush  of  deep  emotion  lingered 
on  a  countenance  which,  though  extremely  young,  was  im- 
pressed with  a  character  of  almost  divine  majesty;  while  her 
dark  eyes  and  long  dark  lashes,  contrasting  with  the  bright- 
ness of  her  complexion  and  the  luxuriance  of  her  radiant  locks, 
combined  to  produce  a  beauty  as  rare  as  it  is  choice;  and  so 
strange,  that  Egremont  might  for  a  moment  have  been  par- 
doned for  believing  her  a  seraph,  that  had  lighted  on  this 
sphere,  or  the  fair  phantom  of  some  saint  haunting  the  sacred 
ruins  of  her  desecrated  fane. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ElizabetH     IncHbald,     "William     God-win, 
MattHew  Lewis,  and  Maria  Edg£ewortH 

THE  heroine  of  Mrs.  Inchbald's  A  Simple  Story  (1791) 
is  like  the  wild  thing  Kitty  (Lady  Caroline  Lamb) 
in  Mrs.  Ward's  The  Marriage  of  William  Ashe.  Miss 
Milner  is  an  exasperating  bit  of  femininity  whose  sole 
desire  is  to  see  how  far  a  woman  can  go  in  testing  a  man's 
love.  Dorriforth,  condoning  all  her  caprices  and  whims  and 
eschewing  his  own  fatal  passion,  sweeps  on  to  the  posses- 
sion of  Miss  Milner  just  as  Edgar  Linton  in  Emily  Bronte's 
Wuthering  Heights  clings  to  Catharine  Earnshaw  in  spite 
of  his  better  judgment.  When  Miss  Milner  cries  out  from 
the  battlements  of  fate,  "That  which  impels  all  my 
actions"  is  "an  unsurmountable  instinct,  a  fatality,  that 
will  forever  render  me  the  most  miserable  of  human 
beings,"  we  peer  into  the  evil  Shad  water  Weir  into  which 
Hardy's  Eustacia  Vye  was  to  plunge,  and  at  the  scaffold 
upon  which  Tess  was  to  step.  In  minor  technique  the 
quarrel  between  Frances  Burney's  Lord  Orville  and  Sir 
Clement  Willoughby  over  Evelina  is  vastly  inferior  to  that 
between  Dorriforth  and  Sir  Frederick  Lawnly  over  Miss 
Milner.  Mrs.  Inchbald  passed  by  Frances  Burney's 
Evelina  (1778)  to  pick  up  the  strength  of  the  setting  and 
dialogue  of  its  quarrel  scene.  When  in  the  garden  Lord 
Orville  makes  Sir  Clement  drop  Evelina's  hand,  Fanny 

192 


Mrs.  Inchbald's  "A  Simple  Story"      193 

Burney  for  the  first  time  makes  us  realize  that  Orville  has 
actually  given  his  heart  to  Evelina;  and,  in  a  stronger 
scene,  when  Mrs.  Inchbald  has  Lord  Frederick  kiss  Miss 
Milner's  hand  and  Dorriforth  strike  him  a  violent  blow 
in  the  face  we  are  for  the  first  time  sure  that  Dorriforth 
loves  Miss  Milner.  The  parallelism  of  dialogue  with 
character  in  action  occurs  because  Fanny  Burney  and 
Mrs.  Inchbald  have  together  touched  one  of  the  most 
delicate  of  the  wires  in  the  mainspring  of  life's  passions 
to  show  that  jealousy  often  brings  the  realization  of  true 
love.  A  beautiful  heroine's  hand  caressed  by  the  hand  of 
a  lord  who  is  a  rake  hastens  a  declaration  of  love  on  the 
part  of  a  noble  hero.  And  Frances  Burney  has  produced 
nothing  in  poignant  pathos  equal  to  Mrs.  Inchbald's 
greatest  stroke  of  genius,  the  meeting  of  Dorriforth 
(Lord  Elmwood)  and  his  daughter  Matilda  on.  the  stair- 
case, when  the  father  unconsciously  admits  that  he  still 
loves  the  quondam  wife  who  had  once  said  that  she  loved 
him  with  all  the  tenderness  of  a  wife  and  with  all  the 
passion  of  a  mistress.  But  this  scene,  great  as  it  is,  fails 
to  effect  a  reconciliation  between  father  and  daughter. 
It  takes  an  excursion  into  Richardsonian  territory  to 
bring  the  novel  to  a  close;  for  Mrs.  Inchbald  presents  a 
Pollexfen  in  the  shape  of  Viscount  Margrave,  who  carries 
off  the  symbol  (Matilda)  of  Dorriforth 's  marriage  to  Miss 
Milner.  With  pistols  in  his  hands,  Lord  Elmwood,  with 
Grandisonian  chivalry,  proves  himself  a  dutiful  father. 
After  a  general  survey  of  the  novel,  it  is  evident  that  Mrs. 
Inchbald  was  perhaps  thrusting  fragments  of  her  own 
histrionic  career  into  the  complex  characterization  of 
Miss  Milner. 

Nature  and  Art  (1796)  is  the  expansion  of  Goldsmith's 

line,    "Near   her   betrayer's   door   she   lays   lier   head." 

Further  pathos  is  added  by  the  scene  which  presents 

William,  the  ruiner  of  Agnes,  as  judge  in  a  court  room 

13 


194  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

unwittingly  sentencing  her  to  the  gallows.1  As  to  style 
Mrs.  Inchbald  is  fond  of  antithetically  placing  her  patches 
of  pathos  as  for  example,  ' '  Rebecca's  heart  bounded  with 
joy  at  the  prospect.  Poor  Agnes  felt  a  sinking,  a  forebod- 
ing tremor  that  wholly  interrupted  the  joy  of  her  expecta- 
tions." Throughout  the  novel  there  is  constant  contrast 
and  antithesis  of  well-alliterated  phrases  and  sentences 
used  to  drive  truths  home.  The  balanced  statements 
while  pleasing  are  quite  too  many  for  the  reader  who 
becomes  keenly  aware  of  the  tone  of  artificiality.  This 
parallelism  is  not  only  confined  to  style  but  it  is  used  in 
the  presentation  of  the  position  of  characters,  such  as  the 
parallelism  of  the  position  of  Rebecca  and  Henry.  The 
plot  is  at  times  as  cheaply  melodramatic  as  the  charac- 
terization that  it  supports.  When  Rebecca,  bluffed  into 
lying  to  get  out  of  a  tight  corner,  accuses  Henry  of  being 
the  father  of  Agnes's  child,  and  accepts  herself  as  its 
mother,  when  she  actually  loves  and  adores  Henry,  there 
is  cast  on  the  plot  an  atrocious  blot.  Mrs.  Inchbald's 
heart-to-heart  talks  with  the  reader  are  poignantly  keen, 
and  it  is  these  that  lift  the  low  tragedy  into  high  tragedy. 
Agnes  and  her  boy  are  prophetic  of  Hester  Prynne  and 
little  Pearl.  Mrs.  Inchbald  seems  to  know  every  step 
down  the  ladder  of  degradation  that  a  woman  can  take 
in  London  town.  No  one  could  have  told  her  anything 
new  about  the  pangs  of  criminal  conscience;  and  she 
parades  upon  the  stage  worldly-minded  curates  who  are 

1  Another  variation  of  the  same  theme  is  Thomas  Nelson  Page's  "The 
Outcast"  in  The  Land  of  the  Spirit  (1913).  In  the  story  a  judge  in  his 
reckless  youth  had  ruined  Antoinette  Lapine,  whose  daughter  and  his  is 
Netta  Thome  the  defendant.  The  counsel  for  Netta,  who  has  murdered 
a  gay  youth  in  first-class  society,  pleads  with  the  judge  to  have  Netta's 
father  step  forward  to  save  her  from  the  gallows.  The  judge  is  caught  by 
his  past,  wild  life;  for  he  had  toyed  with  Antoinette  Lapine  just  as  the 
youth,  who  had  been  murdered,  had  toyed  with  Netta  Thorne  whom  he  as 
an  upright  judge  should  acknowledge  as  his  daughter  before  all  in  the 
court  room. 


Mrs.  Inchbald's  "Nature  and  Art"     195 

hypocritical  adepts  in  hushing  up  things.  In  this  novel 
Mrs.  Inchbald  was  mildly  revolutionary  against  the  shams 
of  her  age,  being  as  antagonistic  to  the  high-class  life  of 
hypocrisy  as  Henry  Arthur  Jones  in  his  dramas  of  our  own 
immediate  time.  Nature  and  Art  closes  with  an  invective 
against  the  rich,  for  according  to  her  view  only  money  in 
1796  was  respected  and  this  doctrine  was  taught  to  the 
young.  Mrs.  Inchbald  believed  that  the  poor  should 
no  longer  pay  homage  to  wealth,  that  they  should  break 
the  bonds  of  their  thralldom.  And  at  the  end  of  A 
Simple  Story  there  is  the  unforgettable  innuendo  of  a 
sneer  at  a  system  of  education  that  made  a  wreck  of  Miss 
Milner's  life.  The  Wordsworthian  pathos  in  these  two 
novels  helped  to  contribute  to  the  sentimentality  of  such 
a  simple  story  as  Mrs.  Amelia  Opie's  Father  and  Daughter 
(1801),  which  caused  the  good  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  shed 
tears. 

William  Godwin's  Things  As  They  Are;  or  the  Adven- 
tures of  Caleb  Williams  (1794)  was  filled  with  such  re- 
volutionary doctrines  that  the  publishers  in  the  first 
edition  omitted  Godwin's  preface  of  May  12,  1794,  which 
contained  ominous  sentences  directed  against  aristocracy. 
By  1795-6  when  Godwin  was  in  no  further  danger  of 
being  called  a  traitor,  since  rioting  had  ceased  and  no 
sanguinary  plots  had  been  detected  which  might  deprive 
Englishmen  of  their  liberties,  the  original  preface  was 
printed  in  full  in  the  second  edition  of  the  novel.  In  this 
masterpiece  the  honest  plebeian  without  money  cannot 
escape  the  aristocrat  aided  by  lucre,  which  at  all  times 
buys  out  the  law.  Caleb  possessed  his  master's  secret. 
He  knew  that  Falkland,  not  the  Hawkinses,  had  mur- 
dered Tyrrel;  and  Falkland,  becoming  aware  of  this,  tried 
to  grind  his  Roger  Chillingworth-like  secretary  to  the 
lowest  position  in  the  social  order.  Thus  Caleb  becomes 
the  "victim  of  man  dressed  in  the  gore-dripping  robes  of 


196  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

authority."      He  is   convicted   of  robbery   by   artificial, 
circumstantial  evidence. 

In  the  dreadful  prison  life  experienced  by  Caleb  the 
influence  of  the  French  Revolution  is  felt.  France  had 
torn  down  her  Bastille,  but  England  still  thrust  men  with 
souls  into  underground  cells  7>2  x  6K",  with  no  windows, 
light,  or  air,  except  what  could  creep  in  through  a  few 
holes  bored  in  the  doors.  As  Caleb  in  his  Newgate  life 
dreams  of  palaces  in  Spain,  Godwin  spends  his  time  in 
denouncing  artificial  society  which  lives  in  them.  Godwin 
had  been  reading  Howard  on  prisons  and  accordingly 
sounded  a  new  note  that  of  social  and  political  reform 
leaving  to  Charles  Dickens  to  better  what  he  ardently 
desired  to  effect.  Godwin  endeavored  to  show  that  in- 
iquitous laws  compel  men  to  be  devils,  precluding  any 
return  to  the  angelic.  One  wicked  act  is  punished  no 
matter  what  saint-like  purity  has  intervened  between  it 
and  the  court  room.  He  demonstrates  that  a  den  of 
robbers  offers  a  finer  atmosphere  than  that  which  sur- 
rounds a  "d — d  aristocrat."  Money  in  the  hands  of  the 
aristocratic  villain  Falkland  makes  even  Gines,  the  leader 
of  a  cut-throat  band,  become  a  Javert  who  relentlessly 
pursues  Caleb  from  London  to  Wales  causing  society 
everywhere  to  set  a  face  of  flint  against  him.  Gines  blasts 
all  chances  of  his  acquiring  a  new  character  of  integrity. 
Even  Collins  will  not  listen  to  Caleb  or  have  any  faith  in 
an  ingrate's  story  directed  against  his  benefactor,  the 
noble  Falkland.  In  one  place  in  the  novel  Caleb  is  forced 
to  disguise  himself  as  a  thief  in  order  to  evade  injustice. 

The  philosophy  of  the  whole  novel  is  built  upon  that  of 
Rousseau  and  that  of  the  Enquiry  concerning  Political 
Justice,  which  Godwin  had  published  in  1793.  Godwin 
takes  the  side  of  the  individualist  advocating  that  any 
government  that  does  not  secure  liberty  of  action  to  the 
individual   is  an   evil,   usurpatory  power  that  seeks  to 


Godwin's  "Caleb  Williams"  197 

destroy  the  individual  conscience  of  humanity.  Laws 
are  set  up  by  fallible  men  who  instituted  them  and  or- 
ganized them  for  the  purpose  of  gratifying  their  own  selfish 
desires.  Thus  laws  are  not  infallible  and  therefore  the 
judgment  of  one  individual  is  just  as  good  as  the  collec- 
tive judgment  of  all  mankind.  If  Caleb  had  had  money, 
his  life  would  never  have  been  in  jeopardy,  nor  would  he 
have  suffered  injustice  for  years.  If  Bulwer  Lytton's 
Eugene  Aram  had  had  money,  he  and  Houseman  never 
would  have  murdered  the  worthless  Clark  the  father  of 
Walter.  Society,  according  to  Godwin,  is  responsible  for 
what  happened  to  Caleb  and  to  Eugene  Aram.  It  is  all 
in  keeping  with  what  he  had  written  in  Political  Jtistice, 

My  neighbor  has  just  as  much  right  to  put  an  end  to  my 
existence  with  a  dagger  or  poison  as  to  deny  me  that  pecuni- 
ary assistance  without  which  my  intellectual  attainments 
or  my  moral  exertions  will  be  materially  injured. 

The  reader  feels  sorry  for  Caleb,  who  is  somewhat  of  a 
Roger  Chillingworth ;  he  feels  sorry  for  educated  Falkland 
because  one  almost  justifies  his  murdering  Tyrrel;  and 
likewise  there  is  grief  over  Eugene  Aram  because  there 
can  be  found  extenuating  circumstances  for  his  crime, 
since  by  it  he  believed  that  he  could  advance  himself 
brilliantly  in  the  intellectual  and  scholarly  sphere.  If 
Godwin  had  changed  the  main  title  of  this  novel  to 
Things  As  They  Sometimes  Are,  the  reader  could  then 
somewhat  pardon  the  padding  of  the  many  erroneous 
deductions.  Who  of  us  can  answer  this  question:  At  the 
close  of  Godwin's  novel  who  is  the  greater  villain  Falkland 
or  Caleb? 

St.  Leon  (1799)  is  the  exposition  of  the  deterioration  of 
a  monomaniac.  Reginald  St.  Leon  possessed  the  passion 
for  the  gaming-table  as  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  La  Motte.     In 


198  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  year  1544  in  Switzerland  he  was  seduced  into  alchemy 
by  Signor  Francesco  Zampieri  who  communicated  to  him 
the  art  of  multiplying  gold  and  the  secret  of  living  for- 
ever. St.  Leon  then,  in  all  probability,  killed  Zampieri, 
and  at  once  proceeded  to  murder  his  own  wife  and  chil- 
dren by  the  monomania  of  his  ideas  to  make  money  and 
to  become  an  evil-eyed  necromancer  in  Italy  and  Spain. 
After  the  death  of  his  sweet  wife  Marguerite,  who  is 
thought  to  be  Godwin's  portrait  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 
in  order  to  escape  from  the  pursuing  agents  of  the  In- 
quisition, in  the  house  of  a  Jew  at  Valladolid,  he  swallows 
the  elixir  of  immortality  which  transforms  him  mentally 
and  physically  from  the  age  of  fourscore  to  twenty. 
This  scene  from  the  point  of  view  of  description  surpasses 
any  other  that  can  be  selected  from  Godwin's  novels. 
There  was  only  one  bit  of  happiness  given  the  villain  and 
that  was  he  lived  to  see  his  son  marry  a  woman  of  in- 
tegrity and  beauty.  That  which  was  lacking  in  St.  Leon, 
the  father,  seemed  to  be  supplied  in  the  son  who  moved 
in  the  path  of  virtue  through  a  highly  honored  career. 
Heredity  counted  for  naught,  for  the  son  had  taken  the 
fighting  chance  against  a  father  who  had  violated  life's 
dearest  ties,  causing  the  death  of  his  wife  and  daughter 
Julia,  the  direct  result  of  his  having  transformed  himself 
into  an  intellectual  machine.  It  is  important  to  remember 
that  Reginald  St.  Leon,  the  necromancer,  raised  into 
existence  Mrs.  Shelley's  (Godwin's  daughter's)  Franken- 
stein, who  created  the  monster  who  begot  in  1820  that 
half-human  and  half-divine  devil  Melmoth  the  Wanderer 
of  Charles  Robert  Maturin's. 

On  picking  up  Fleetwood  (1805)  the  critic  can  note 
many  contributions  to  English  fiction.  North  Wales 
scenery  lifts  Fleetwood  to  a  poetic  pitch  of  sensualism; 
and  the  influence  of  Oxford  landscape  drops  him  to  a 
prosaic   flat   of  animalism.     Thus   we  see  how  Godwin 


Godwin's  "Fleetwood"  199 

shifted  environment  so  as  to  make  a  setting  determine 
action  and  character.  We  observe  Fleetwood  as  a  student 
with  other  Oxonians  quizzing  a  freshman  and  applauding 
his  tragedy  of  The  Five  Labors  of  Hercules.  At  length, 
by  reason  of  brutal  jeering  and  hazing,  they  drive  this 
freshman  to  insanity  and  suicide.  This  delineation  of 
Oxford  University  life  carries  us  to  the  escapades  of 
Reginald  in  Lockhart's  Reginald  Dalton  (1823),  to  Cuth- 
bert  Bede's  (Rev.  Edward  Bradley's)  The  Adventures  of 
Mr.  Verdant  Green  (1853-57),  and  to  Thomas  Hughes's 
Tom  Brown's  School  Days  (1857)  and  Tom  Brown  at 
Oxford. 

The  agonies  of  little  eight-year-old  Ruffigny  as  he  was 
compelled  to  watch  every  day  fifty-six  swifts  of  thread  in 
M.  Vaublanc's  silk-manufactory  at  Lyons  are  prophetic 
of  the  greater  tortures  which  will  come  to  Mrs.  Trollope's 
Michael  Armstrong,  the  Lancashire  factory  boy  of  1840. 
Some  of  these  little  associates  of  Ruffigny  were  three  or 
four  years  of  age,  and  a  few  of  the  little  living  skeletons 
in  order  to  reach  the  swifts  had  to  wear  iron  buskins 
which  would  elevate  them  to  the  proper  height  after  they 
had  climbed  on  top  of  the  stools.  Fifty-six  swifts  were 
assigned  to  each  child  who  was  compelled  to  adjust  such 
from  six  in  the  morning  to  six  at  night  with  the  exception 
of  half  an  hour  for  breakfast  and  an  hour  for  dinner. 
Godwin  strongly  arraigns  child-labor  and  demands  an 
exemption  from  such  up  to  a  certain  age.  Godwin  cries 
out,  "I  know  that  the  earth  is  the  great  Bridewell  of  the 
universe  where  spirits  descended  from  heaven  are  com- 
mitted to  drudgery  and  hard  labor."  These  little  emaci- 
ated children  resembling  old  men  (the  older  men  died 
before  they  were  forty)  were  to  be  delineated  further  by 
Charles  Dickens  and  Mrs.  Frances  Trollope.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  Colonel  Jack,  Ruffigny,  Oliver  Twist,  and 
Michael  Armstrong,  it  would  not  have  been  possible  for 


200  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Disraeli  to  have  created  Devilsdust  working  up  the  refuse 
from  the  cotton  mills  into  counterpanes  and  coverlids 
in  the  Wadding  Hole.  Though  sympathetic  to  the  suffer- 
ings of  children  in  the  toils  of  child-labor,  Disraeli  in 
Sybil  (1845)  felt  that  it  was  his  duty  to  transfer  the 
delineation  of  such  to  men  who  were  encountering  all 
manner  of  evil  in  the  British  factories. 

Fleetwood,  like  Rochester  in  Jane  Eyre,  comes  to  his 
marriage  after  a  life  of  debauchery  with  the  Countess  De 
B.  in  Paris.  Later  he  is  seen  in  temporary  madness  on  the 
continent  which  shows  that  Godwin  was  to  pass  from  the 
study  of  marital  jealousy  and  bickerings  to  the  psycho- 
logical analysis  of  the  pathology  of  permanent  madness  in 
Mandeville.  On  concluding  the  novel  the  reader  carries 
away  with  him  the  portrait  of  a  languishing  Magdalene 
of  extravagance  Mrs.  Gifford  who,  like  George  Eliot's 
Rosamond  Vincy,  found  a  Dr.  Lydgate  in  Mr.  Kenrick  a 
surgeon.  Mrs.  Gifford  accomplishes  the  tragical  destruc- 
tion of  Kenrick  and  herself  at  Bath. 

In  Mandeville  (181 7)  there  is  the  tragedy  of  misguided 
paternal  instinct  that  has  ruined  the  life  of  deformed 
poetic  Audley,  the  uncle  of  Mandeville.  In  Mandeville 
there  is  at  first  shown  intermittent  insanity  which  had 
been  caused  by  the  shock  of  seeing  his  father  and  mother 
butchered  in  Ireland  when  he  was  a  little  boy.  When 
Mandeville  goes  to  Winchester  College  there  is  an  enlarge- 
ment upon  what  has  already  been  seen  in  the  experiences 
that  came  to  Fleetwood  at  Oxford.  It  is  here  that  Man- 
deville in  saving  his  schoolmate  Waller  by  taking  upon 
himself  the  whole  disgrace  of  the  transaction  of  the  cari- 
cature of  Charles  I  creates  within  himself  a  deadly  hatred 
for  Clifford  the  finest,  noblest  of  all  the  Wintonians. 
Throughout  the  narrative  Mandeville  and  Clifford  march 
like  Siamese  twins  of  hate  and  love.  The  weight  of  Clif- 
ford's personality  and  the  disgrace  at  school  send  Mande- 


Godwin's  "  Mandeville  "  201 

ville  to  the  madhouse  at  Cowley.  When  the  reader  sees 
his  sister  Henrietta  by  his  bedside  bringing  him  back  out 
of  his  hereditary  lunacy  to  sanity  by  the  touch  of  a  soul  that 
is  keenly  attuned  to  his,  he  readily  falls  into  the  opinion 
of  the  poet  Shelley  who  averred  that  it  was  the  most 
touching  scene  in  the  novel.  Mandeville  had  been  tutored 
into  a  religion  of  hate  by  the  curate  Hilkiah,  and  he  had 
been  tutored  into  a  religion  of  love  by  Henrietta.  Hen- 
rietta makes  a  study  of  her  brother's  madness,  and  brings 
Clifford  into  his  presence  so  that  aversion  and  antipathy 
can  gradually  be  overcome.  There  is  a  fine  scene  of 
reconciliation,  but  things  come  out  psychologically  wrong 
effecting  disaster  to  Henrietta's  experiment.  Henrietta 
falls  in  love  with  Clifford  and  finally  decides  to  go  to  her 
bridal  couch  over  the  body  of  a  brother.  When  Mande- 
ville suspects  this,  Clifford  and  Henrietta  become  one 
poison  tree  of  Java  in  his  sight. 

The  whole  novel  is  the  psychological  autobiography  of 
a  madman.  In  the  duel  that  Mandeville  has  with  Clifford 
he  receives  from  the  sword  of  his  adversary  a  deep  gash 
on  his  face  that  makes  it  perpetually  wear  a  distorted 
smile,  which  Mandeville  recognizes  as  being  the  badge  or 
brand  of  his  own  broken  mind.  Clifford  had  won  the  day 
in  becoming  the  husband  of  Henrietta  and  the  conqueror 
of  Mandeville.  The  mark  on  Mandeville's  face  was  as 
plain  as  the  horseshoe  on  the  frowning  brow  of  Scott's 
Sir  Robert  Redgauntlet  and  is  as  symbolic  of  degradation 
as  the  scarlet  A  was  to  Hawthorne's  Hester  Prynne.  The 
reader  plainly  sees  the  influence  of  Charles  Brockden 
Brown's  Wieland.  Godwin  in  his  preface  readily  avowed 
his  indebtedness  by  saying  that  his  subject  was  derived 
from  "  Wieland,  written  by  a  person  certainly  of  distin- 
guished genius,  who,  I  believe,  was  born  and  died  in  the 
province  of  Pennsylvania  in  the  United  States  of  North 
America,  and  who  calls  himself  C.  B.  Brown."    This  bit 


202  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

of  information  is  interesting  since  it  shows  how  the 
influence  of  Mrs.  Ann  Radclifle  journeyed  across  the 
Atlantic  in  1798  to  be  called  back  again  by  Godwin  in 
18 1 7.  Mandeville  under  the  influence  of  Clifford  de- 
generates into  a  madman  just  as  Wieland  of  Charles 
Brockden  Brown's  becomes  a  dangerous  maniac  under 
the  pressure  of  the  influence  of  Carwin.  St.  Leon  was 
a  depraved  monomaniac.  Fleetwood  was  temporarily 
deranged  by  reason  of  the  contamination  of  courtesans. 
Godwin  established  a  thorough-paced  trail  for  future  mad- 
men in  English  fiction.  Along  this  beaten  path  were 
to  step  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Balfour  of  Burley  and  Habak- 
kuk  Mucklewrath,  Charles  Dickens's  Uncle  Dick,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson's  Master  of  Ballantrae's  brother,  Enoch 
Arnold  Bennett's  Darius  Clayhanger,  and  such  decadent 
specimens  as  Mrs.  Harrison's  Rene  Dax  and  Bibby  mor- 
bidly portrayed  in  Adrian  Savage. 

Cloudesley  (1830)  the  worst  novel,  with  the  exception  of 
Deloraine,  that  Godwin  wrote  is  the  narrative  of  the 
exposition  of  this  question:  What  did  it  profit  a  man  to 
gain  the  whole  world  of  aristocracy  at  the  expense  of  his 
brother's  son,  who  was  the  rightful  Baron  Alton  and  Earl 
Danvers?  Most  of  the  time  in  the  novel,  when  alive  to 
action  in  narrative,  we  are  with  St.  Elmo  the  brigand 
defying  Florence,  Venice,  and  Genoa,  from  the  heights 
of  the  Apennines.  If  we  are  not  moving  with  condottieri 
on  the  shores  of  Lake  Celano,  we  are  their  constant  asso- 
ciates in  Sicily.  The  bravoes  in  Mrs.  Behn's  The  Lucky 
Mistake,  the  banditti  in  Zeluco,  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho, 
The  Monk,  The  Bravo  of  Venice,  and  Hie  Albigenses,  are  on 
dress  parade  in  Cloudesley;  and  the  kindly  brigand  St. 
Elmo  was  destined  to  live  again  in  S.  R.  Crockett's  The 
Silver  Skull.  As  for  the  last  novel  of  Godwin's  Deloraine 
(1833)  it  is  nothing  but  the  study  of  the  murder  of  an 
Enoch  Arden.    His  murderer  is  Deloraine  who  is  pursued 


Matthew  Lewis's  "The  Monk"         203 

through  the  remainder  of  the  novel  by  Travers,  the  friend 
of  the  murdered  victim,  who  proves  a  weak  edition  of 
Gines.  Travers  forgives  Deloraine  at  the  end  of  the  novel 
and  marries  his  sister. 

Matthew  Lewis  in  1795  succeeded  at  the  age  of  twenty 
in  dashing  off  with  somewhat  of  the  swiftness  of  a  Beck- 
ford  a  novel,  the  morality  of  which  shocked  his  father. 
Its  chief  expository  transaction  supplied  a  hypothesis  in 
controversion  of  which  Maturin  reached  a  magnificent 
Gothic  height  of  genius  in  the  use  of  the  charnel-house 
and  the  supernatural.  In  one  respect  Lewis  was  unlike 
his  predecessor  and  contemporary  Mrs.  Radcliffe  since 
there  are  no  monitions  or  tricks  of  suspense  used  by  him  to 
keep  one  anticipating  ghosts  who  decline  to  enter.  When 
perusing  The  Monk  the  reader  actually  sees  the  Bleeding 
Nun  at  Don  Raymond's  bedside  kissing  his  lips;  and 
trembles  as  he  sees  and  hears  speak  a  real  sheeted  ghost 
of  Antonia's  mother  Elvira.  The  onlooker  is  terrified 
when  at  Matilda's  summons  the  beautiful  angel  Lucifer 
enters;  and  again  he  is  appalled  when  the  ugly  Apostate 
angel  with  his  dragon  wings  suddenly  materializes  in  the 
cell  of  Ambrosio  to  trick  the  monk  into  abandoning  the 
God  that  seemingly  had  abandoned  him.  In  other  re- 
spects Lewis  was  susceptible  to  the  work  that  had  been 
done  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  He  was  an  expert  not  only  in 
purloining  substance  but  in  attuning  his  style  to  the 
melancholy  quality  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  as  felt  in  the 
following  excerpt  from  The  Monk : 

While  I  sat  upon  a  broken  ridge  of  the  hill,  the  stillness  of 
the  scene  inspired  me  with  melancholy  ideas  not  altogether 
unpleasing.  The  castle,  which  stood  full  in  my  sight,  formed 
an  object  equally  awful  and  picturesque.  Its  ponderous  walls, 
tinged  by  the  moon's  solemn  brightness;  its  old  and  partly 
ruined  towers,  lifting  themselves  into  the  clouds,  and  seeming 


204  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

to  frown  on  the  plains  around  them;  its  lofty  battlements, 
overgrown  with  ivy,  and  folding  gates,  expanding  in  honour 
of  the  visionary  inhabitants;  made  me  sensible  of  a  sad  and 
reverential  horror. 


In  The  Monk  the  mob  and  conflagration  which  destroy 
St.  Clare  convent  predetermine  the  destruction  of  Letitia 
Landon's  convent  of  St.  Valerie  in  Romance  and  Reality 
(1831).  When  confronted  by  the  figures  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion, we  recall  certain  pages  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  The  Italian 
and  pick  up  Maturin's  Melmoth  for  comparison.  Possibly 
Poe  before  portraying  Madeline  in  The  Fall  of  the  House 
of  Usher  may  have  watched  Lewis's  Agnes  de  Medina 
confined  in  the  vaults;  and  by  observing  her  tortures,  or 
those  of  Moncada  in  the  hands  of  the  churchmen  in  Mel- 
moth, Poe  may  have  gathered  all  the  cruel  strength  that 
is  felt  in  The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum.  The  great  emotional 
scenes  in  Lewis's  novel  are  those  which  depict  the  devil 
carrying  off  the  Monk  and  the  Wandering  Jew  exorcising 
the  Bleeding  Nun.  It  is  the  first  time  in  English  fiction 
that  the  Wandering  Jew  receives  a  full-length  delineation 
on  canvas.  Lady  Caroline  Lamb's  Kabkarra  of  1823  is 
the  devil  Jew.  Croly's  Salathiel  of  1827  is  satanic  in  his 
majestic  powers,  and  Disraeli's  Alroy  of  1833  is  a  Semitic 
Vathek.  Then,  in  1844,  the  Jew  lost  his  Mephistophelian 
qualities  and  donned  the  seraphic  robe  of  Disraeli's  Si- 
donia;  and,  in  1876,  he  put  on  the  cherubic  raiment  be- 
longing to  George  Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  and  Mordecai. 
This  reconstruction  in  favor  of  the  Jew  is  a  return  to 
Scott's  Isaac  of  York  of  1820  and  Bacon's  Joabin  of  1627. 

If  it  had  not  been  for  The  Monk,  Maturin  in  all  prob- 
ability never  would  have  written  Melmoth,  in  which  was 
controverted  Lewis's  idea  that  in  extremity  every  mortal 
would  sell  his  soul  to  the  devil.  Ambrosio  was  tricked  into 
resigning  all  hope  of  salvation  for  earthly  safety.     Mel- 


Lewis's  "The  Bravo  of  Venice"        205 

moth  the  Wanderer  said  that  for  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  he  had  been  experimenting  with  countless  diabolic 
devices  so  as  to  trick  to  damnation  men  and  women  in  dire 
extremity,  and  had  not  been  able  to  find  any  Ambrosios 
who  to  gain  the  whole  world  would  lose  their  own  souls. 

The  Bravo  of  Venice  (1804)  is  a  story  cast  in  the  method 
of  drama.  The  scene  is  Venice;  the  time  is  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century;  and  the  dramatis  personce  consist 
of  seventeen  individuals,  since  Flodoardo  and  Abellino 
are  one  and  the  same.  In  making  a  scenario  the  first 
part  of  the  novel  up  to  where  Abellino  tells  about  Matteo's 
death  could  be  put  into  Act  I  of  six  scenes.  Act  II,  with 
five  scenes,  could  carry  one  to  where  Abellino  asks  the 
Doge  for  Rosabella  as  his  bride.  Act  III,  Scene  I,  could 
begin  where  Prince  of  Monaldeschi,  Rosabella's  suitor,  is 
found  dead  in  the  garden  with  a  note  pinned  on  his  body 
by  Abellino  announcing  that  such  would  be  the  fate  of  all 
those  who  pretended  to  Rosabella's  hand.  Scene  II  could 
commence  in  the  palace  where  Rosabella  confesses  her 
love  for  Flodoardo.  Andreas,  Doge  of  Venice,  promises 
Rosabella  to  Flodoardo  upon  condition  that  Flodoardo 
capture  Abellino.  Flodoardo  promises  to  fetch  Abellino 
in  twenty-four  hours  to  the  palace,  and  orders  that  guards 
should  be  there  to  assist  in  taking  the  desperado.  Scene 
III  could  take  place  in  the  palace  where  Flodoardo  appears 
an  hour  later  than  the  appointed  time.  He  leaves  the 
room  to  summon  Abellino  his  prisoner.  Abellino  enters, 
and  doffing  his  disguise  shows  to  the  astonished  Doge, 
courtiers,  and  conspirators,  the  features  of  Flodoardo. 
Abellino,  after  the  conspirators  have  been  seized,  com- 
municates to  all  that  he  is  Count  Rosalvo  who  has  been 
kept  from  his  kingdom  by  Count  Monaldeschi;  and  that 
it  is  now  possible  for  him  to  return  to  his  inheritance 
since  Monaldeschi  before  his  death  had  confessed  all  of 
his  treachery.    Thus  Abellino  in  his  own  sweet  way  won 


206  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

his  beautiful  and  peerless  bride  Rosabella,  the  niece  of 
the  Doge. 

The  Monk  captured  the  public  of  Lewis's  time  just  as 
his  Castle  Spectre,  full  of  the  horrible  and  the  spectacular, 
enthralled  the  theatre-goers  who  clapped  their  hands  at 
anything  melodramatic  in  those  days.  Men  and  women 
who  could  extol  such  plays  as  Bluebeard  (1798)  of  Colman 
the  Younger  and  The  Stranger  of  Kotzebue's  could  easily 
enjoy  the  cries  of  "Abellino!  Abellino!"  as  the  stage 
gradually  filled  up  with  stabbed,  dead  bravoes.  Lewis  in 
fiction  is  precisely  what  he  is  in  drama.  He  goes  too  far 
in  portraying  loathsome  bits  of  realism  in  The  Monk.  At 
one  time  he  went  too  far  in  his  melodramatic  monologue 
The  Captive,  which,  when  Mrs.  Litchfield  recited  it  at 
Covent  Garden,  had  the  effect  of  driving  the  women  into 
hysterics  and  all  into  horror  because  a  woman  was  being 
driven  to  insanity  before  their  eyes  on  the  stage.  The 
lurid  Websterian  touches  of  cruelty  that  torture  Agnes 
in  The  Monk  make  us  feel  that  Lewis's  fiction  has  exactly 
the  same  effect  as  his  drama  filled  with  gruesome  and 
hideous  situations. 

In  passing  from  The  Monk  (1795)  to  Castle  Rackrent 
(1800)  of  Maria  Edgeworth's  the  reader  is  confronted  by 
Regina  Maria  Roche  who  holds  extended  the  popular 
Children  of  the  Abbey  (1796  ?),  the  opening  pages  of  which 
are  somewhat  similar  to  the  beginning  of  Mary  Brunton's 
Self-Control  (1810).  Amanda,  the  heroine,  is  insulted  by 
Belgrave  and  is  soon  seen  kneeling  at  her  mother's  grave. 
The  poor  thing  is  apparently  controlled  by  an  afrit  who 
metes  out  deception.  Things  brighten  up  a  little  as  the 
pages  are  turned  to  where  Lord  Mortimer  in  Wales  is 
trying  his  game  to  be  repulsed,  or  to  where  later  stands 
the  castle  Carberry  in  Ireland.  Perhaps  the  choice  piece 
of  workmanship  is  the  Belgrave  closet  scene.  The  re- 
mainder of  the  novel  is  a  rechauffe  of  Richardsonian  stuff. 


Maria  Edgeworth's  "Castle  Rackrent"  207 

Belgrave  goes  a  little  farther  than  Pollexfen  in  his  success- 
ful amour,  facilitated  by  accidental  circumstances.  The 
ghost  and  the  interspersed  lyrics  from  Gray,  Goldsmith, 
Akenside,  and  Burns,  together  with  strains  profusely 
culled  from  Milton,  show  how  Regina  Maria  Roche  in- 
effectually re-arranged  the  stage  property  and  music  of 
"Monk"  Lewis's  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe's. 

Maria  Edgeworth  the  product  of  an  English  boarding 
school  was  perhaps  sixteen  years  old  when  she  first  saw 
Ireland.  After  being  thoroughly  trained  in  aphorisms 
by  her  father  Richard,  and  after  seventeen  years  of 
association  with  the  people  of  Ireland,  she  wrote  Castle 
Rackrent  (1800).  Maria  Edgeworth  believed  that  Eng- 
lishmen had  never  seen  an  Irishman  or  heard  his  true 
dialect  except  on  the  London  stage;  and  she  averred  that 
they  did  not  know  how  to  depict  the  Irish  any  more  than 
the  Chinese  knew  how  to  paint  lions.  She  had  no  patience 
with  any  one  who  made  fun  of  the  Irishman  and  his 
brogue.  He  should  be  taken  just  as  seriously  as  one 
speaking  the  cockney  dialect  of  London,  the  cant  of 
Suffolk,  or  the  wild  and  uncouth  phraseologies  of  Shrop- 
shire and  Yorkshire.  The  English  could  think  that  an 
Irishman  was  a  fool,  but  it  was  to  be  emphatically  shown 
by  her  that  all  his  foolish  blunders  were  never  blunders  of 
the  heart.  An  Irishman  never  becomes  a  tragical  charac- 
ter except  when  antagonistic  influences  are  playing  upon 
his  good  nature  and  generosity.  The  estate  of  Castle 
Rackrent  was  fatal  to  all  its  warm-hearted  possessors. 
Sir  Patrick  speedily  died  a  drunken  death;  Sir  Murtagh 
was  killed  by  lawsuits  and  a  wife's  jarring  tongue;  and 
gambling,  a  Jewish  wife,  and  a  duel,  made  a  quick  demise 
for  Sir  Kit.  Sir  Condy,  the  last,  greatest,  and  weakest  of 
his  race,  spun  a  coin  for  choice  between  two  girls  for  a 
wife,  and  as  bad  luck  would  have  it,  he  was  given  the 
woman  who  spent  his  money  right  and  left.    The  expenses 


208  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  connection  with  securing  the  election  to  Parliament 
completed  his  material  ruin.  As  bankruptcy  and  creditors 
were  closing  in  upon  him,  his  wife  deserted  him  when  he 
needed  her  most.  After  shamming  death  at  a  wake,  at 
which  he  finds  that  few  in  this  world  come  to  see  a  bank- 
rupt die;  and  after  being  further  taken  in  even  after 
bankruptcy  by  Jason,  he  found  a  way  to  a  helpful  winding 
sheet  by  a  copious  draught  of  the  contents  of  a  great  horn 
of  liquor.  Sir  Condy  had  been  a  fool  all  his  days,  but  he 
had  been  beloved  by  the  people  and  the  little  children  and 
had  generously  provided  for  his  wife. 

In  this  first  piece  of  fiction  Maria  Edgeworth  made  it 
possible  for  Lady  Morgan  to  flesh  her  maiden  sword  in 
The  Wild  Irish  Girl  (1806) ;  for  Jane  Austen  to  do  the  little 
bow-wow  for  the  middling  classes  of  southern  England; 
for  Scott  to  do  the  big  bow-wow  in  Waverley,  GuyManner- 
ing,  and  Rob  Roy;  and  for  John  and  Michael  Banim 
to  write  The  O'Hara  Tales  (1825-27).  Gerald  Griffin 
published  The  Tales  of  the  Munster  Festivals  (1827)  and 
The  Collegians  (1829).  William  Carleton  issued  Traits 
and  Stories  of  the  Irish  Peasantry  (1830),  to  be  followed  by 
Fardorougha  the  Miser  and  Willy  Reilly.  Samuel  Lover's 
Rory  O'More  appeared  in  1837  and  Handy  Andy  in  1842; 
and  Charles  James  Lever's  Harry  Lorrequer  was  printed 
in  1837.  Maria  Edgeworth  not  only  inspired  such  de- 
lineation of  Irish  life,  but  wafted  something  of  her  tech- 
nique in  composition  to  help  the  Brontes  in  their  depiction 
of  Yorkshire  moor  life.  Joseph  with  his  splendid  charac- 
terizing dialect  of  Yorkshire  was  one  of  Emily  Bronte's 
marked  successes  in  Wuthering  Heights.  George  Eliot 
and  Enoch  Arnold  Bennett  are  also  indebted  to  Maria 
Edgeworth  for  their  cross-sections  of  country  folk  life  in 
Warwickshire  and  the  pottery  districts  of  Staffordshire. 

Belinda  (1801)  contains  Maria  Edgeworth's  greatest 
piece  of  feminine  characterization.     Life  indeed  to  Lady 


Edgeworth's  "Belinda"  209 

Delacour,  who  was  not  yet  thirty,  had  been  a  long  drawn 
out  tragi-comedy.  She  had  lived  like  a  coquette,  and  she 
was  determined  that  she  would  die  like  one.  She  had 
made  love  to  Colonel  Lawless,  who,  because  of  his  mid- 
night escapade  with  her  and  Harriet  Freke,  had  been 
called  out  and  shot  by  her  husband.  By  questionable 
actions  Lady  Delacour  had  produced  the  drinking  habit 
in  her  husband,  and  had  cultivated  hallucinations  such 
as  to  make  herself  believe  that  her  daughter  Helena  had 
no  love  for  her.  In  her  hypochondriacal  moods  she  had 
deemed  herself  as  not  being  a  fit  mother,  and  fancied  that 
she  was  dying  of  a  cancer.  Lady  Delacour  hated  gossipers 
and  scandal  breeders  such  as  Mrs.  Freke  and  the  bad  Mrs. 
Luttridge,  when  she  was  no  whit  better  than  they.  After 
beautiful  Belinda  Portman  entered  her  house  in  London, 
Lady  Delacour  soon  began  to  imagine  that  an  intrigue 
was  being  carried  on  between  Belinda  and  her  husband; 
therefore,  to  spite  this  husband,  Lady  Delacour  behind 
the  curtain  encouraged  the  advances  of  young  Clarence 
Hervey.  Lady  Delacour  was  a  Viscountess  who  had 
spent  three  fortunes  in  trying  to  insure  felicity  and  had 
awakened  to  find  it  only  ennui.  She  still  endeavored  to 
find  domestic  happiness  in  Methodistical  books,  lauda- 
num, and  visions.  Wealth,  rank,  and  beauty  being  of  no 
avail  her  only  relief  was  fashionable  dissipation.  In  her 
had  died  the  source  of  tears,  and  it  was  only  when  seeing 
a  tragedy  that  she  brought  forth  the  cambric  handkerchief 
of  sensibility.  Her  head  was  full  of  crape  petticoats, 
horses,  carriages,  Harriet  Freke,  and  Mrs.  Luttridge. 
Hervey's  scheme  for  the  redemption  of  this  hypochondriac 
was  to  have  her  love  Helena  and  cultivate  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Lady  Anne  Percival  who  might  win  her  from  her 
associates — the  ceremonious  fops  and  belles  who  possessed 
no  real  affections.  The  one  great  scene  in  the  novel  is 
where  Lady  Delacour,  without  love  in  her  heart,  is 
14 


210  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

insanely  jealous  of  Belinda,  who,  she  thinks,  is  trying  to 
slip  into  her  shoes  and  shuffle  towards  her  husband's 
coronet.  The  characterizing  dialogue  is  superb  as  Be- 
linda, with  the  knife  which  she  had  recently  found  and 
closed  and  put  in  her  pocket,  stands  at  the  mercy  of  the 
hysterical  Lady  whose  rouge  is  sadly  furrowed  by  tears. 
Straightway  Belinda  flees  to  Oakley  Park  to  see  per- 
manent domestic  joys  for  the  first  time. 

The  novel  is  a  mixture  of  fine  humor  and  pathos. 
Perhaps  the  keenest  anguish  in  the  tragi-comedy  is  felt 
by  little  Helena  whose  life  seems  to  have  been  all  tragedy 
until  she  received  the  first  kind  look  from  her  whimsical 
mother.  One  is  pleased  at  the  inversion  of  Lady  Dela- 
cour's  character  which  the  reader  grasps  at  the  end  of  the 
novel  when  he  hears  her  say,  "Do  not  let  go  your  father's 
hand — Helena,  my  love."  In  turning  from  characteri- 
zation to  motivation  there  is  the  realization  that  Maria 
Edgeworth  was  a  poor  plotter.  The  portrait  of  Virginia, 
sweet  and  fresh  as  nature  at  the  beginning  of  this  novel,  is 
soon  crumpled  between  the  two  sliding  iron  doors  of  the 
plan  devised  by  Maria  Edgeworth  to  entrap  and  unite 
Belinda  and  Hervey  in  wedlock.  The  artificial  method 
used  is  abominable.  One  might  as  well  kill  Virginia  as 
make  a  Mrs.  Freke  out  of  her;  and  this  is  precisely  what 
happens,  for  she  falls  in  love  with  a  picture  of  nobody. 
When  this  picture  materializes  into  somebody  he  is 
Captain  Sunderland  who  is  nobody  after  all  but  a  piecing 
in  of  a  painting  of  one  of  Virginia's  romantic  dreams.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  novel  Maria  Edgeworth  depicts 
Virginia  in  love  with  love  as  a  fresher,  sweeter  child  of 
nature  than  Belinda;  but  wantonly  for  plot  device  she 
destroys  the  girl's  characterization.  If  she  had  through- 
out the  novel  developed  this  heroine  of  Bernardin  de  St. 
Pierre's  by  keeping  her  always  in  the  rural  setting  that 
had  been  determining  and  moulding  the  simplicity  of  her 


Edgeworth's  "The  Manufacturers"      211 

character,  Virginia  might  have  emerged  head  and  shoul- 
ders above  Belinda  and  Lady  Delacour  as  the  strongest 
personality  in  the  masterpiece. 

Maria  Edgeworth  kept  the  style  in  Belinda  well  sus- 
tained with  the  Ithuriel  spear-like  insertion  of  felicitously 
ethical  phrases  which  punish  Lady  Luttridge,  Lady  Freke, 
and  Lady  Delacour  for  their  lawless  lives;  and,  in  the 
short  stories  and  novelettes  that  she  wrote  between  1801 
and  The  Absentee  (18 12),  one  is  studying  characters  who 
are  fleeing  from  disaster  along  the  road  of  morality  to 
the  inn  of  cure  and  convalescence.  The  Grateful  Negro 
(1802),  Murad  the  Unlucky  (1802),  The  Manufacturers 
(1803),  Emilie  de  Coulanges  (1803),  Ennui  (1804),  and 
Madame  de  Fleury  (1805)  form  a  crescendo  of  terminal, 
ethical  climaxes  to  which  are  nearly  always  added  Maria 
Edgeworth's  fatal  postscripts  of  exposition  tending  to 
destroy  her  connotative  bits  of  narration,  since  the 
reader  is  asked  to  grasp  twice  what  he  has  already  grasped 
once.  The  Grateful  Negro,  a  replica  of  Mrs.  Behn's 
Oroonoko,  shows  the  evils  of  negro  plantation  life  in 
Jamaica.  Durant,  the  overseer,  by  his  cruel  treatment 
of  the  slaves  in  time  will  run  into  Mrs.  Frances  Trollope's 
Whitlaw  Senior's  son  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Legree. 
Miss  Edgeworth's  story  shows  what  a  glorious  privilege 
was  given  to  negroes  the  moment  they  touched  English 
soil,  and  is  a  pathetic  salute  fired  in  the  direction  of  black 
faces  serving  under  English  masters  on  alien  shores. 
Murad  the  Unlucky  is  a  Turkish  tale  full  of  oriental  fumes 
to  which  De  Quincey  might  have  turned  before  sending 
in  to  his  publishers  the  Co?ifessions  of  an  English  Opium- 
Eater.  The  Manufacturers,  an  echo  of  Mrs.  Charlotte 
Smith's  The  Old  Manor  House,  sounds  a  warning  to  trades- 
people not  to  marry  into  circles  above  them.  The  manu- 
facturer, who  turned  gentleman  and  changed  his  name, 
succeeded  in  climbing  into  the  frozen  circle  above  him 


212  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  for  a  time  lived  the  high  life  with  a  wife  who  had 
the  gambling  craze.  He  lived  to  learn  that  children 
born  of  marriages  of  convenience  love  not  their  parents, 
and  thus  the  reader  learns  to  anticipate  what  Thackeray's 
Madame  de  Florae  told  Ethel  Newcome.  Such  children 
are  brought  up  to  think  happiness  lies  only  in  making  high 
connections;  and  pride  of  place  prostrates  all  plans  that 
are  continually  being  made  for  economic  retrenchment. 
Do  not  acquire  the  habit  of  aping  betters;  for  habit  is  a 
species  of  moral  predestination  from  which  there  is  no 
escape.  Mr.  William  Darford,  who  kept  to  his  cotton 
business  and  his  own  class  type,  was  happy  and  wealthy, 
and  was  only  miserable  when  trying  to  extricate  his  friend 
Charles  from  his  dilemma.  At  last  Darford  was  successful 
in  turning  his  penitent  friend  back  again  from  a  miserable 
gentleman  into  a  manufacturer,  destined  after  the  bitter 
marital  experience  with  Mrs.  Germaine  to  value  above  all 
things  domestic  felicity  enjoyed  in  the  common  rank  and 
file  of  life. ' 

In  Emilie  de  Coulanges  there  is  presented  the  study  of 
reticulations  in  the  shawl  of  sensibility  tightly  drawn 
around  the  shoulders  of  a  benefactress,  Mrs.  Somers,  who 
was  so  afflicted  with  vapeurs  noirs  that  she  analyzed  her 
protegee  as  possessing  no  heart;  and  Mrs.  Somers,  after 
having  constantly  made  Emilie  the  victim  of  black-eyed 
biliousness,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  she  herself  must 
have  had  no  heart  to  have  regarded  Emilie  as  an  ingrate 
by  supposing  that  she  had  an  opposing  temperament. 
The  story  is  a  triumph  in  shading  with  the  same  shade  two 
feminine  temperaments.  "There  are  people  who  would 
rather  that  their  best  friends  should  miss  a  piece  of  good 
fortune  than  that  they  should  obtain  it  without  their 

1  H.  G.  Wells  in  Kipps  (1905)  teaches  a  draper  to  remain  a  draper,  if  he 
would  be  happy.  On  the  social  ladder  one's  round  is  fixed,  therefore  one 
should  stay  on  it  and  not  climb  to  the  round  above. 


Edgeworth's  "  Ennui"  213 

intervention."  Maria  Edgeworth  analyzes  family  jars  as 
resulting  from  defects  of  temper,  which  defects  arouse  in 
us  the  keenest  sense  of  humor,  which  is  not  wit,  or  folly, 
or  habit,  or  affectation;  for  it  is,  as  Congreve  has  written 
in  Concerning  Humour  in  Comedy  (1695),  'that  which  is  a 
characteristic  peculiarity  that  inevitably  makes  one  say  a 
certain  thing,  which  is  natural  and  proper  to  one  individual 
only,  and  which  distinguishes  his  discourse  and  his  actions 
from  the  discourse  and  the  actions  of  all  others.'1  Ennui 
is  the  analysis  of  a  man  possessing  the  characteristics  of  a 
Lady  Delacour.  Aside  from  the  fact  that  it  is  a  story  of 
two  islands,  and  apart  from  the  fact  that  it  contains  old 
Ellinor's  utterance,  "if  it  plased  God,  she  would  like  to  die 
on  a  Christmas-day,  of  all  days;  becaase  the  gates  of 
heaven,  they  say,  will  be  open  all  that  day;  and  who  knows 
but  a  body  might  slip  in  unknownst?",  and  that  divorce 
has  crept  again  into  English  fiction,  and  that  an  ill-bred 
Irishman  can  not  stand  prosperity  when  elevated  to  the 
legal  ownership  of  Glenthorn  Castle,  because  its  former 
unlawful  possessor  had  received  the  gentlemanly  training 
which  should  have  been  his  from  birth,  there  is  much 
moral  indigestion  caused  by  the  ethical  fallacy  we  have 
swallowed.  Adversity  has  formed  the  Earl  of  Glenthorn's 
character;  therefore,  prosperity  can  not  fashion  for  Christy 
Donoghue  an  upright,  steady  character,  since  adversity 
has  not  properly  moulded  it.  The  reader  justly  indignant 
turns  with  relief  and  pleasure  to  Madame  de  Fleury  to 
learn  that  education  for  children  in  Paris  is  more  valuable 
than  money;  that  a  Victoire  should  be  taught  obedience 
by  having  the  tender  spot  of  gratitude  touched;  and  that 
patience  should  be  inculcated  by  the  method  of  bribing 

1  The  real  words  that  Congreve  used  in  defining  humor  are:  "A  singular 
and  unavoidable  manner  of  doing  or  saying  anything,  peculiar  and  natural 
to  one  man  only,  by  which  his  speech  and  actions  are  distinguished  from 
those  of  other  men." 


214  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

to  control  temper.  Manon  would  not  take  to  this  educa- 
tional system  of  Madame  de  Fleury's  and  was  driven  out 
as  an  exponent  of  bad  education  to  die  an  immoral  woman 
in  the  days  of  Ca  ira  and  La  Guillotine.  Victoire  lost 
nothing  in  the  shipwreck  of  France,  because  none  of  the 
sans-culottes  could  steal  from  her  head  the  contents  of  a 
good  education.  Madame  de  Fleury  saved  herself  and 
her  estate  by  reason  of  the  gratitude  of  the  lower  classes 
who  would  not  permit  a  hair  of  her  head  to  be  touched 
because  of  their  having  been  aided  by  her  system  of 
charity  education.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  this 
story  appeared  a  year  after  the  publication  of  Mrs. 
Amelia  Opie's  Adeline  Mowbray;  or,  Mother  and  Daughter 
(1804). 

The  opening  chapter  of  The  Absentee  (1812)  is  as  mas- 
terly in  technique  as  that  of  any  modern  classic  novel. 
It  is  Maria  Edgeworth's  best  short-cut  in  dialogue  to 
character  in  action.  In  the  crush-room  of  a  London  opera 
house  Lord  Colambre  overhears  conversation  that  ana- 
lyzes the  social  prominence  of  his  mother  and  father,  Lady 
Clonbrony  and  Lord  Clonbrony.  From  the  lips  of  the 
English  aristocracy  the  son  ascertains  that  Irish  hospi- 
tality has  been  reluctantly  accepted  and  that  all  London 
is  ridiculing  his  mother  behind  her  back  because,  by  means 
of  mimicking  cockney  dialect  and  English  manners  and 
using  money  that  dishonest  agents  in  Ireland  have  wrung 
from  the  suffering,  hungry  dwellers  on  her  lands,  she  has 
tried  to  push  herself  above  the  best  in  rank  and  wealth  in 
London.  Lord  Colambre  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  an 
absentee  in  England  is  nobody,  somewhat  like  his  father 
whose  only  business  is  to  stand  by  and  see  his  wife  squan- 
der money.  Out  of  love  for  his  father,  mother,  and  native 
country,  he  resolves  to  go  to  Ireland  to  inquire  into  the 
natural  condition  of  their  fortune.  The  part  of  the  novel, 
where  he  in  disguise  of  an  Englishman  interested  in  mines 


Edgeworth's  "The  Absentee"  215 

is  stranded  at  the  cottage  of  widow  O'Neil,  is  to  show  that 
the  door  of  Irish  hospitality  is  always  open  to  strangers 
although  it  may  be  that  a  welcome  is  all  that  the  possessor 
of  a  hut  may  have  to  offer.  The  greatest  scene,  which 
Macaulay  likens  unto  that  contained  in  the  XXII  Book 
of  The  Odyssey,  is  that  one  which  occurs  when  Lord 
Colambre  still  in  disguise  enters  the  castle  of  Clonbrony 
just  as  the  agent  is  renewing  the  leases  for  the  tenants. 
The  poor  widow  is  not  permitted  to  renew  her  lease.  The 
son  interferes.  The  mother  and  daughter  are  frightened 
and  try  to  restrain  him.  It  is  then  that  Lord  Colambre 
steps  up  and  says,  "Let  the  voice  of  truth  be  heard"; 
and  "Who  the  devil  are  you?"  says  old  Nick  Garraghty. 
Just  then  some  one  calls  Lord  Colambre  by  name  and  old 
Nick  and  his  accomplice  are  denounced  and  equity  reigns 
amid  consternation.  Maria  Edgeworth  would  show  that 
the  place  for  all  intelligent  Irishmen  is  in  Ireland.  Irish 
lords  should  not  leave  their  estates  to  reside  in  London  to 
ruin  the  happiness  of  their  families  as  well  as  the  homes  and 
joys  of  the  peasant  tenants  left  behind  in  old  Ireland. 
Irish  birth  should  not  be  denied  in  order  that  a  living 
might  be  gained  in  London.  Lady  Clonbrony  at  last  sees 
the  error  that  well-nigh  ruined  her  good-natured  husband, 
son,  and  niece  Miss  Nugent  who  throughout  the  entire 
English  experience,  sweetly  and  unselfishly,  tactfully  and 
sensibly,  had  protected  her  aunt  from  her  follies,  and  had 
shielded  her  from  the  insults  of  female  dragons  in  English 
high  life.  Lady  Clonbrony  goes  back  to  the  dear  old  home 
in  the  Emerald  Isle,  where  she  realizes  that  love  and 
friendship  of  family  and  retainers  are  the  only  things  worth 
while  in  this  world.  The  Semitic  humor  that  is  to  play 
about  Isaac  of  York,  as  he  is  matched  in  cunning  by  Gurth 
in  payment  for  Ivanhoe's  horse  and  armor,  begins  to 
crackle  as  Sir  Terence  O'Fay  for  the  saving  of  Lord 
Colambre's  fortune  assumes  the  role  of  an  Irish  Jew  in 


216  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

order  to  outwit  the  English  Jew  coachmaker,  Mordicai. 
And  Count  Halloran  is  as  noble  in  type  of  all  that  is 
true  in  Irish  quality  as  King  Corny  in  Ormond  (1817). 

The  Absentee  (1812)  is  a  trans-Irish-Sea  novel;  Ormond 
is  a  trans-English-Channel  novel.  Young  Ormond  is  an 
Irish  Tom  Jones.  After  reading  Fielding's  masterpiece, 
Ormond  is  on  the  point  of  patterning  himself  after  its 
hero,  when  all  at  once  the  antidote  to  the  poison  of  lawless 
procedure  is  applied  in  the  form  of  a  poultice  of  readings 
from  Richardson's  Sir  Charles  Grandison.  By  imitating 
Sir  Charles  Grandison  at  the  Black  Islands,  he  learns  the 
art  of  controlling  that  Tom  Jones  spirit  which  had  been 
threatening  Dora,  the  daughter  of  King  Corny.  Later, 
as  a  result  of  reading  Lord  Chesterfield's  Letters  it  is  all 
that  he  can  do  to  keep  in  abeyance  advances  toward  a 
married  woman  Lady  Millicent.  At  the  end  of  the  novel 
Ormond  goes  to  visit  Dora  who  had  become  the  wife  of 
M.  Connal;  and  in  the  salons,  theatres,  and  boulevards  of 
Paris  in  the  days  of  Louis  XV,  when  Marie  Antoinette 
was  dauphiness,  he  again  feels  within  his  veins  pulsating 
the  poison  of  his  Tom  Jones  nature.  He  becomes  ac- 
quainted with  the  writings  of  such  French  celebrities 
as  Marivaux,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  converses  with 
D'Alembert  and  Marmontel.  If  there  was  any  one  that 
saved  him  at  the  critical  moment  from  ruining  the  woman 
Dora,  whom  he  fancied  he  loved,  it  was  this  Marmontel, 
who,  by  the  naivete  and  finesse  of  his  Les  Contes  Moraux 
recalled  his  former  veneration  for  the  perfect  man  Sir 
Charles  Grandison  of  Samuel  Richardson.  And  if  it  was 
not  a  Marmontel  it  was  the  result  of  listening  to  the  echo 
of  the  soft  voice  of  a  girl  by  the  name  of  Annaly.  Ormond 
had  always  listened  to  "good  sense  from  the  voice  of 
benevolence."  Then,  too,  it  was  his  memory  of  King 
Corny  whose  goodness  of  heart  had  never  been  spoiled 
by  the  cunning  of  the  head.    Thus  Ireland  wins  back  for 


Edgeworth,  Lady  Morgan,  Scott        217 

itself  a  nobleman  that  all  the  blandishment  of  an  impure 
Parisian  court  life  could  not  destroy. 

Lady  Morgan  made  use  of  the  close  of  this  novel  in 
giving  the  reader  a  glimpse  at  another  glittering  Parisian 
assemblage  of  noblemen  and  ladies  gathered  about  Napo- 
leon Bonaparte  as  First  Consul,  and  an  Irishman  O'Brien, 
turned  French  nobleman,  upon  whose  arm  is  leaning  his 
Irish  wife  as  beautiful  as  Connal's  Dora.  Maria  Edge- 
worth,  if  she  had  kept  the  second  half  of  this  novel  up 
to  the  superior  excellence  of  the  first  half,  would  have 
achieved  her  greatest  triumph  in  Irish  characterization, 
but  the  discharge  of  the  gun  that  killed  King  Corny  seems 
to  have  paralyzed  the  hand  which  held  the  magic  pen. 
The  novel  so  far  as  characterization  is  concerned  died  a 
violent  death  with  King  Corny.  Maria  Edgeworth  never 
again  successfully  was  able  to  mend  this  pen  which  had 
been  marred  in  the  explosion  which  caused  King  Corny 's 
death.  Helen  (1834)  is  as  futile  in  portraying  fashion- 
able society  types  as  Patronage  had  been  in  18 14.  But 
taking  her  novels  all  together,  she  had  made  an  immense 
contribution  to  English  fiction.  She  had  handed  on  the 
fairy  knowes,  banshees,  wakes,  and  peasant  customs  of 
Ireland,  to  Sir  Walter  Scott.  The  characteristics  of  such 
Irish  heroes  as  Lord  Colambre,  King  Corny,  and  Ormond, 
became  the  traits  of  the  Highland  chieftains  of  Scotland 
who  knew  no  disloyalty,  double-dealing,  or  unkindness. 
From  Castle  Rackrent  to  Ormond  we  see  Irishmen,  who  as 
Scotchmen  in  the  hands  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  were  to  love 
their  provinces,  their  clans,  and  their  families,  from  the 
centre  of  their  circles  to  the  circumferences  thereof. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

Amelia  Opie,  Jane  Porter,  Lady  Morgan, 
Anna  Maria  Porter,  CKarles  Robert 
Mat\irin,  ElizabetK  Hamilton,  Hannah 
More,  Mary  Brunton,   and  Jane  Austen 

MRS.  AMELIA  OPIE'S  Father  and  Daughter  (1801) 
is  plotted  according  to  the  Wordsworthian  pathos 
which  filled  Mrs.  Inchbald's  Nature  and  Art 
(1796).  Agnes  Fitzhenry,  instead  of  finding  herself 
happily  married  at  Gretna  Green  to  her  lover  Clifford, 
awakens  from  her  dream  to  the  reality  of  seduction  in 
London.  The  novel  seems  to  be  an  expository  narrative, 
the  key  sentence  of  which  is  that  the  consequences  of  one's 
virtues  or  vices  can  not  be  confined  to  one's  self  alone. 
When  fleeing  with  her  illegitimate  babe  through  a  forest 
on  the  way  back  to  meet  the  father  she  had  deserted,  she 
has  a  melodramatic  meeting  with  a  maniac  who  proves  to 
be  her  father  who  had  just  escaped  from  the  Bedlam  he 
had  founded.  In  the  region  of  her  nativity  Agnes  learns 
how  wide  reaching  evil  is  in  its  influence  on  others,  since 
Fanny  with  whom  she  resided  loses  three  scholars.  Her 
destiny  is  to  live  with  a  mad  father,  and  to  become  a  nurse 
frequenting  the  bed  of  the  dying,  an  occupation  which  fell 
to  the  lot  of  her  descendants,  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Ruth  and 
Hawthorne's  Hester  Prynne.  Agnes  on  the  day  of  the 
funeral  of  her  father  is  compelled  to  carry  an  added  an- 
guish, suffering  the  loss  of  her  little  son,  Edward,  who  is 

218 


Mrs.  Opie's  "Adeline  Mowbray"       219 

abducted  by  Clifford  who  has  now  become  Lord  Mount- 
carrol.  It  is  not  long  until  Agnes  dies  by  reason  of  this 
two-fold  shock,  and  Clifford  follows  her  having  been  worn 
out  by  vices  and  by  the  gnawing  remorse  consequent  to  his 
not  being  able  to  atone  to  Agnes  or  to  his  boy,  who  could 
not  claim  the  parental  estate  because  of  illegitimacy. 

Adeline  Mowbray;  or,  Mother  and  Daughter  (1804)  is  built 
on  bigger  trellis-work.     Frederick  Glenmurray  has  written 
books  in  favor  of  free  love  and  against  dueling,  and  acts 
contrary  to  the  premises  therein  laid  down.     After  fall- 
ing in  love  with  Adeline  he  frowns  on  union  libre  and  be- 
comes involved  in  a  duel.     In  order  to  escape  seduction 
at  the  hands  of  Sir  Patrick  O' Carrol,  who  had  married 
her  mother,  Mrs.  Mowbray,  Adeline  abandons  her  home 
and  throws  herself  into  the  arms  of  Glenmurray  with 
whom  she  elopes  to  France.     Glenmurray  does  his  best 
to  influence  her  to  accept  the  cement  that  society  has  for 
love  and  honor,  but  she  constantly  opposed  the  marital 
relationship,  since  it  was  contrary  to  the  doctrines  of  her 
lover's  volumes  and  to  the  teachings  of  a  mother  who  had 
been  wild  on  the  subject  of  education.     At  one  time  she 
was  almost  persuaded  to  go  to  the  altar  by  reason  of  seeing 
a  boy  burst  into  tears  at  being  ostracized  for  his  illegiti- 
macy by  his  little  playmates  who  claimed  all  the  rights 
that   went   with   legitimate   birth.     But   when   she   was 
delivered  of  a  dead-born  child  there  seemed  to  be  no  good 
reason  for  putting  on  the  manacles  of  a  marriage  ceremony. 
This  stubbornness  indirectly  caused  the  death  of  Glen- 
murray, who,  as  he  passed  away,  fully  realized  it  as  a 
retributive  action  for  writing  pernicious  books.     Adeline 
was  now  left  at  the  mercy  of  society  that  she  had  defied. 
Necessity  compels  her  to  accept  Berrendale  as  a  husband. 
Then  comes  what  we  would  expect,  persecution  and  bad 
treatment;  and,  after  her  little  daughter  Editha  is  born, 
Berrendale  deserts  her  and  death  speedily  follows.     Just 


220  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

before  her  exit  Adeline  gives  Editha  into  the  keeping  of 
Mrs.  Mowbray  with  the  injunction  that  Editha  must  be 
fed  on  a  different  educational  diet  from  that  on  which  she 
had  been  nourished.  The  reader  feels  that  Mrs.  Mowbray 
will  not  fasten  the  same  educational  system  on  Editha  as 
that  which  ruined  Adeline.  The  granddaughter  will  be 
taught  to  be  slow  to  call  the  experience  of  ages  contempt- 
ible prejudices,  so  that  ultimately  the  grown-up  girl  will 
have  no  opinions  that  can  destroy  her  sympathies  with 
general  society  and  make  her  an  alien  to  the  hearts  of 
those  among  whom  she  lives.  There  seems  to  be  no  doubt 
that  Mrs.  Opie  in  writing  this  novel  had  the  influence  of 
Mary  Wollstonecraft  in  mind. 

The  tiny  mass  of  morbid  realism  in  Adeline  Mowbray 
presages  the  great  dark  land  of  its  activity  in  the  novels 
of  Thomas  Hardy,  Hall  Caine,  and  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 
Glenmurray  and  Adeline  in  union  libre  in  France  survived 
as  David  Grieve  and  Elise  Delaunay  in  Paris.  The  deser- 
tion and  death,  which  came  to  Adeline  for  breaking  the 
dearest  law  set  by  society,  were  repeated  in  worse  form  in 
the  fate  which  came  to  David's  sister  Louie  in  the  shape  of 
the  Algerian  dagger  by  which  she  escaped  from  the  fierce 
burden  of  a  self  inherited  from  a  mother,  who,  like  daugh- 
ter, had  made  herself  an  alien  to  the  hearts  of  those  among 
whom  she  had  lived,  and  had  taken  her  own  life.  The 
pernicious  system  of  education  by  which  a  mother  ruined 
Adeline  is  similar  to  that  motivated  by  a  father  to  engulf 
George  Meredith's  Richard  Feverel. 

In  1803  was  published  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,  which 
extolled  Poland  and  deified  its  heroes  who  were  not  dead 
but  living  at  the  time  that  the  novel  was  written.  It  was 
something  new  to  have  Jane  Porter  fling  ink  from  the  pot 
of  sentiment  upon  a  bit  of  stirring  current  history.  The 
gifted  sister  of  Anna  Maria  Porter  by  the  machinery  of 
the  steady  pressure  of  "weeps"  interested  both  sides  of 


Jane  Porter's  "Scottish  Chiefs"         221 

the  Atlantic  in  the  cause  of  freedom,  which  shrieked  louder 
and  better  on  the  pages  of  Harriet  Martineau's  The  Hour 
and  the  Man  (1840)  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  (1852).  In  1809  appeared  Scottish  Chiefs 
which  had  been  prepared  in  much  the  same  manner  as 
Scott's  Border  Minstrelsy.  In  addition  to  what  legendary 
lore  supplied,  she  consulted  the  actual  data  of  history. 
When  a  comparison  is  made  between  Sophia  Lee's  The 
Recess,  Clara  Reeve's  The  Old  English  Baron,  and  Scottish 
Chiefs  there  is  a  feeling  that  a  vast  step  has  been  made 
forward  in  the  technique  of  the  historical  novel.  Jane 
Porter's  masterpiece  is  the  first  noble  eminence  by  which 
we  can  measure  the  altitude  of  Scott's  magnificent  moun- 
tain range. 

Jane  Porter  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  at  times  seem  to  have 
been  congenitally  inaccurate  so  far  as  following  faithfully 
the  outlines  of  authentic  history.  If  the  reader  wishes 
more  minute  accuracy  he  must  wait  until  Thackeray  writes 
his  Henry  Esmond  and  Charles  Reade  The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Jane  Porter  visited  all 
the  places  that  she  describes  in  the  Scottish  Chiefs,  it  is  not 
her  realistic  backgrounds  that  appeal,  but  the  romantic 
personages  moving  in  front  of  them  in  the  mists  of  history. 
In  the  martial,  romantic  melodrama  Lady  Mar,  quivering 
under  the  atrocious  passions  which  lead  her  on  in  the  guise 
of  the  Knight  of  the  Green  Plume  to  plunge  a  dagger  into 
the  breast  of  Sir  William  Wallace,  is  one  of  the  great 
minor  feminine  rogues  in  English  fiction.  Almost  every 
boy  or  girl  knows  or  ought  to  know  how  Lady  Mar,  re- 
jected and  baffled  in  her  guilty  love,  caused  the  scene  on 
Tower  Hill  where  Helen's  bridal  bed  became  the  scaffold 
on  which  Wallace  escaped  the  hangman's  noose  and 
Helen's  arms  to  be  forever  true  to  his  Marion  in  heaven. 
Jane  Porter  in  The  Pastor  s  Fireside  (18 15)  failed  to 
fascinate  the  reading  public.     Perhaps,  in  collaboration 


222  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


&j 


with  her  sister,  she  penned  Sir  Edward  Seaward' 's  Narrative, 
which  shows  a  return  to  Daniel  Defoe. 

The  novels  of  Sydney  Owenson  (Lady  Morgan)  are 
St.  Clair;  or,  the  Heiress  of  Desmond  (1804);  The  Novice 
of  St.  Dominick  (1805);  The  Wild  Irish  Girl  (1806);  Ida 
of  Athens  (1809);  The  Missionary  (181 1);  O'Donnell,  a 
National  Tale  (18 14);  Florence  Macarthy  (181 8);  and 
The  O'Briens  and  the  0' Flaherty s  (1827).  Sydney  Owen- 
son,  the  daughter  of  an  Irish  actor,  figuratively  clasped 
hands  with  Maria  Edgeworth  to  arouse  Englishmen  to 
have  a  heartfelt  interest  toward  their  brothers  across  the 
Irish  Sea.  Though  Lady  Morgan  began  to  publish  in 
1804  it  was  not  until  1806  that  she  became  famous  as  the 
author  of  The  Wild  Irish  Girl.  The  wild  scenery  of 
Connaught,  where  are  seen  poverty-stricken  peasants, 
such  as  are  represented  by  Murtoch  O'Shaughnessy  and 
his  ready-to-be-sold  wife,  who  are  robbed  by  the  heartless 
friar  in  the  parish  mass-house  or  who  are  fleeced  by  the 
honest  priest  whose  mind  was  always  full  of  scorpions  for 
so  doing,  is  the  setting  of  realistic  misery  used  for  the 
delightfully  absurd  romance  of  the  Prince  of  Inismore  and 
his  daughter  Glorvina. 

An  ancient  feud  from  Cromwell's  time  had  existed 
between  the  House  of  M.  and  the  House  of  Inismore. 
Over  in  England  at  the  time  the  story  opens  the  Earl  of 
M.,  disgusted  with  his  boy  Horatio  who  had  become 
entangled  in  an  intrigue  with  Lady  C,  decides  to  send 
the  wayward  boy  to  Ireland  to  study  Coke  and  Lyttleton 
instead  of  belles-lettres.  From  Dublin  Horatio  goes  to 
his  father's  handsome  lodge,  which  is  a  Tusculum  in  savage 
Connaught.  It  is  not  long  until  by  the  happy  accident  of 
a  fall  he  is  conveyed  into  Inismore  Castle  to  behold  a 
beautiful  princess  sitting  beside  him  with  snowdrops 
scattered  on  her  lap.  This  wild  Irish  girl  who  kisses  the 
snowdrops  and  puts  them  in  her  bosom  is  one  for  whom 


Lady  Morgan's  "Wild  Irish  Girl"      223 

art  can  do  nothing  since  nature  has  done  all.  She  can  play- 
on  the  harp,  sing  Campbell  to  Erin-go-Bragh,  dance,  draw, 
read  Latin  and  Greek;  and,  on  bringing  to  our  hero  the 
first  violet  of  spring,  the  Irish  beauty  quotes  Tasso,  while 
Horatio  replies  in  French.  Within  the  castle  our  hero  is 
soon  giving  Glorvina  drawing  lessons,  and  whiles  away 
his  time  making  a  philological  study  of  Erse.  Princess 
Glorvina  possesses  a  hand  that  blushes  in  order  to  match 
her  auburn  hair,  which  is  richly  bedecked  with  Irish  gems. 
Ossian  is  her  favorite  study.  In  the  celebration  of  the 
rites  of  the  first  of  May  she  gloriously  dances  an  Irish  jig ; 
and  gradually,  amid  quotations  from  Rousseau,  Collins, 
and  Ossian,  the  lovers  are  drawn  closer  and  closer  together. 
At  times  we  enter  the  boudoir  where  Horatio  obtained  his 
first  kiss ;  and  we  see  the  blood  of  our  hero  on  snowdrops, 
which  had  been  culled  from  the  spot  where  he  had  fallen 
from  the  castle  wall.  At  length  there  is  seen  a  paper-mark 
on  which  there  is  a  mysterious  masculine  scrawl;  and, 
disturbed  by  it  as  much  as  Horatio,  to  keep  from  fainting 
we  rush  from  the  castle  to  find  ourselves  in  a  rustic  church- 
yard just  in  time  to  see  an  Irish  funeral  and  hear  our  hero 
propose  to  Glorvina  beneath  a  cypress  tree.  Feeling  that 
the  precincts  of  the  castle  afford  a  better  refuge  than  the 
graveyard  we  rush  back  to  the  paper-mark  about  which 
must  lurk  the  mysterious  unknown.  All  at  once  Horatio 
is  seen  writhing  in  the  throes  of  jealousy  on  a  sick  bed,  for 
there  is  no  doubt  now  that  Glorvina  is  carrying  on  a  secret 
correspondence  with  a  male.  At  last  the  wild  Irish  girl 
tells  Horatio  that  she  never  can  be  his,  and  the  parting 
scene  takes  place.  On  top  of  all  these  woes  that  had 
descended  upon  the  head  of  Horatio  there  comes  a  letter 
from  his  father,  who  tells  him  that  he  has  selected  an  Eng- 
lish girl  whom  he  is  bringing  over  to  have  straightway 
married  to  his  beloved  son.  Led  by  curiosity  Horatio 
rushes  away  to  Dublin  to  take  one  look  at  the  face  of  his 


224  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

future  fate.  Then  it  is  he  feels  that  he  must  once  more 
see  Glorvina,  so  back  to  Inismore  Castle  he  goes,  arriving 
just  in  time  to  see  a  mysterious  stranger  leading  his  sweet- 
heart to  the  altar,  behind  which  stood  the  priest.  The 
first  words  of  the  marriage  ritual  are  being  pronounced, 
when  the  ghastly  Horatio  rushes  forward  to  recognize  the 
incognito  as  his  own  father,  who  long  before  under  a 
fictitious  name  had  entered  Inismore  Castle  to  relieve 
the  Prince  from  bankruptcy.  The  glorious  Glorvina 
had  been  part  of  the  compact,  and  she  was  nobly  keep- 
ing her  promise  to  her  father  to  take  the  man  who 
had  saved  the  family  from  degradation.  Of  course  the 
father  of  Horatio  steps  aside  and  leaves  the  altar  to 
the  boy. 

In  1827,  in  the  surety  of  a  style  at  last  happily  acquired, 
Lady  Morgan  flung  forth  a  novel  that  delineated  a  then 
recent  stirring  bit  of  Irish  history.  In  Phoenix  Park, 
Dublin,  where  in  our  time  Lord  Cavendish  was  murdered, 
attention  is  focused  upon  a  military  review  to  be  followed 
by  a  runaway  in  which  Lady  Knocklofty  is  rescued  by 
Murrogh  O'Brien.  This  chariot  episode  is  followed  by  a 
riot  in  which  the  gallant  rescuer  is  a  prominent  figure 
disgracing  the  sacred  vestments  which  pronounce  him  to 
be  a  student  enrolled  in  the  University  of  Dublin.  After 
such  excitement  we  are  carried  to  the  castle  of  Dublin, 
where  the  female  oligarchy,  doing  the  King's  business,  is 
lined  up  for  inspection.  At  the  rout  the  eminent  pa- 
triot Lord  Walter  Fitz waiter  is  a  pleasing  figure.  After 
Murrogh  O'Brien  is  expelled  from  Trinity,  Lord  Walter 
becomes  an  animated  piece  of  flesh  and  blood  as  we  gather 
from  his  views  that  he  stands  for  reform  in  Parliament 
and  Catholic  emancipation  and  the  Society  of  the  United 
Irishmen,  into  which  Murrogh  is  initiated.  This  Lord 
Walter  is  a  portrait  of  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald  who  was 
so  ill-fated  as  to  have  all  his  plans  interpreted  as  leading 


Lady  Morgan's  Murrogh  O'Brien       225 

to  a  separation  of  Ireland  from  England;  and  for  the 
advocacy  of  which,  he  afterwards  lost  his  life. 

Lady  Morgan's  insertion  of  romance  into  this  national 
tale  is  highly  commendable.  A  fair  incognita  at  intervals 
throughout  the  novel  appears  to  Murrogh  to  save  him 
from  the  United  Irishmen  and  the  dangerous  flirtation 
with  Countess  Knocklofty.  This  beautiful  unknown  is  a 
religieuse  who  had  assumed  the  role  of  providence  in  order 
to  be  a  guardian  angel  to  Murrogh  in  Italy  and  elsewhere 
at  the  most  critical  moments  of  his  life.  Murrogh  now 
acquires  the  title  of  Lord  Arranmore  by  reason  of  the  death 
of  his  relapsed  Papist  father  and  travels  through  the 
beautiful  scenery  of  Connemara  to  meet  his  divine  aunts 
living  in  Bog  Moy.  Lady  Knocklofty  unexpectedly  ar- 
rives in  the  region,  and  Lord  Arranmore  still  susceptible 
to  her  charms  plans  a  gipsy  tour  of  the  Arran  Isles.  It  is 
at  this  critical  moment  that  the  party  visit  the  abbey  of 
Moycullen,  of  which  the  presiding  goddess  proves  to  be 
Beavoin  O 'Flaherty.  In  the  midnight  interview  that 
Murrogh  has  with  this  beautiful  sibyl  we  realize  that  she 
is  a  picture  torn  out  of  one  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  novels.  It 
is  this  creature  marked  with  a  black  cross  on  her  forehead 
who  even  at  that  very  moment  at  midnight  knew  that  a 
warrant  had  been  issued  for  the  arrest  of  Murrogh  on  the 
ground  of  treason.  This  beautiful  divinity  oracularly 
voicing  Ireland's  wrongs  tells  Lord  Arranmore  that  she  is 
his  cousin  and  that  he  must  leave  the  shores  of  Ireland  at 
once  if  he  would  save  a  life  that  had  always  been  unques- 
tionably dear  to  her.  The  reader  now  knows  that  they 
love  each  other. 

The  close  of  the  novel  is  a  strong  piece  of  work  especi- 
ally the  tragic  episode  in  the  abbey  as  the  men  rush  for- 
ward during  the  divine  service  to  serve  the  King's  writ  on 
Lord  Arranmore.  The  valiant  deeds  of  Shane,  the  last  of 
the  true  Irish  rapparees,  have  been  exceedingly  well  done, 
is 


226  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


&j 


Shane  is  one  of  the  most  sympathetically  drawn  char- 
acters in  the  four  volumes.  Arranmore  is  hunted  down 
and  seized  as  he  is  bending  over  the  body  of  one  of  his 
pursuers  who  had  been  killed  by  Shane.  Murrogh  is 
taken  to  the  state  prison  of  Kilmainham  from  the  lofty 
wall  of  which  on  the  day  of  his  trial  he  succeeded  in  escap- 
ing by  means  of  a  knotted  rope.  In  Paris,  after  the  First 
Consul  General  Bonaparte,  in  spite  of  an  attempted 
assassination  on  the  way,  is  seen  entering  the  box  in  the 
opera  house  with  Josephine  to  hear  the  oratorio  of  Haydn, 
we  see  among  those  assembled  General  Murrogh  O'Brien 
and  his  beautiful  wife  who  is  still  playing  the  role  of  a 
guardian  angel  as  on  that  night  when  she  had  taken  Lady 
Knocklofty's  ring  from  the  finger  of  the  sleeping  Murrogh 
and  had  substituted  the  black,  Jesuitic  emblematic  ring  of 
her  own.  Lady  Morgan  in  portraying  the  exciting  life  of 
Murrogh  O'Brien  drew  upon  the  experiences  in  the  ad- 
venturous life  of  Thomas  Corbet.  This  novel  was  not 
only  widely  read  in  England  but  in  France,  Galignani  the 
famous  Parisian  publisher  issuing  it  in  English  in  1828. 

Anna  Maria  Porter's  first  novel  was  The  Hungarian 
Brothers  (1807)  which  was  followed  by  Don  Sebastian;  or, 
the  House  of  Braganza  (1809)  and  the  Knight  of  St.  John 
(18 1 7).  It  is  interesting  to  observe  Charles  and  Deme- 
trius, the  Hungarian  brothers,  as  they  are  pushed  back 
and  forth  in  military  tactics  on  the  squares  of  the  chess- 
board extending  from  Vienna  to  Ulm  at  a  time  when 
Napoleon  was  sacrificing  Moreau,  and  Archduke  Charles 
was  frantically  floundering  in  front  of  his  beloved  Aus- 
trians.  Charles  the  level-headed  brother  loses  his  balance 
many  times  before  he  succeeds  in  winning  Adelaide 
Ingersdorf;  and  Demetrius,  who  never  was  head  but  all 
heart,  after  nearly  ruining  his  life  because  of  an  infatu- 
ation with  Zaire  (Madame  de  Fontainville) ,  a  married 
woman,  is  cured  of  his  passion  by  the  beautiful  Princess 


Anna  Porter's  "Don  Sebastian"        227 

Constantia  whom  he  marries.  Less  watered  sentiment 
and  more  militarism  might  have  kept  the  novel  alive  till 
this  day.  As  it  was,  as  late  as  until  1 839  it  was  regarded  as 
a  standard  novel;  and  the  hussar  life  therein  depicted 
brightened  the  metal  on  the  shakos  seen  moving  on  the 
hills  in  G.  R.  Gleig's  The  Subaltern  (1826)  and  Thomas 
Hamilton's  Cyril  Thornton  (1827). 

Don   Sebastian,    King  of   Portugal,   fell  in  love  with 
Donna  Gonsalva,  a  fascinating  girl  his  inferior  in  birth. 
Announcing  to  the  court  that  she  would  become  his  wife, 
he  placed  her  in  the  palace  of  Xabregas.     Soon  after  this 
Sebastian  engaged  in  a  war  with  the  Moors  in  Barbary. 
After  the  battle  of  Alcazar  he  was  taken  prisoner  by  the 
Alarbes  who  sold  him'  to  the  Almocadem,  El  Hader,  the 
father  of  the  beautiful  Kara  Aziek.      This   heroine,   in 
order  to  free  Sebastian,  whom  she  loved,  pledged  herself 
to  marry  a  hated  bashaw.     Sebastian  does  not  know  the 
price  that  she  had  agreed  to  pay  for  purchasing  his  free- 
dom.    Before  Sebastian  leaves  Barbary,  Kara  Aziek  gives 
him  a  lock  of  her  jetty  tresses  and  lifts  her  veil  not  so 
much  to  reveal  her  sadly  wondrous  beauty  as  to  bid  him 
look  into  her  heart  for  that  feminine  truth  which  she 
thinks  he  will  never  find  in  the  Portuguese  Donna  Gonsalva. 
Upon  returning  to  Portugal,   Sebastian  rushes  into  the 
apartments  in  the  palace  of  Xabregas  to  meet  the  woman 
whom  he  intended  to  make  his  wife;  and  as  Dumas  makes 
Catalane   Mercedes  false   to   Edmond   Dantes  so  Anna 
Maria  Porter  makes  the  Portuguese  Donna  Gonsalva  false 
to  Don  Sebastian.     It  is  a  tremendous  scene  in  which  Don 
Sebastian  gazes  upon  a  tiny  form  in  the  cradle  and  then 
looks  wildly  upon  her  who  had  become  the  mistress  of  his 
trusted  friend,  Don  Antonia  de  Crato.     The  child  in  the 
cradle  and  the  mother  enceinte  give  him  a  fate  much  worse 
than  that  which  was  given  to  the  prisoner  of  the  Chateau 
D'If.     The  occidental  woman  has  deceived  Sebastian,  but 


228  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  oriental  woman  never;  and  soon  Sebastian  is  in  Bar- 
bary  where  is  seen  in  the  moonlit  sky  a  speck  which,  as 
it  gradually  approaches,  proves  to  be  the  silver- winged, 
milk-white  dove  Babec  bearing  a  message  of  eternal  love 
from  Kara  Aziek.  The  divine  Kara  gave  up  the  faith  of 
Mahomet  for  the  sake  of  Sebastian.  Their  flight  from 
the  bashaw,  their  grief  in  Brazil  as  they  were  compelled  to 
give  up  their  daughter  Blanche  for  the  welfare  of  Portugal, 
and  the  death  of  this  faithful  eastern  woman  who  had  been 
worn  out  by  many  sufferings,  make  Anna  Maria  Porter's 
novel  the  equal  of  her  sister  Jane's  Scottish  Chiefs. 

Charles  Robert  Maturin,  the  Irish  clergyman  living  in 
Dublin,  in  the  year  that  Miss  Porter  brewed  the  broth  of 
sentiment  served  up  in  European  barracks,  experimented 
in  the  Radcliffe  Gothic  romance.  The  Fatal  Revenge;  or, 
The  Family  of  Montorio  is  a  study  in  the  sources  of  vision- 
ary terror.  In  a  land  where  "the  soul  trembles  on  the 
verge  of  the  unlawful  and  the  unhallowed"  Montorio 
stands  persuading  his  brother's  sons  to  murder  their 
father.  After  the  pressure  of  the  occult  has  been  removed 
and  the  revenge  has  been  consummated  the  nephews  stand 
forth  as  Montorio's  own  sons.  The  Wild  Irish  Boy  (1808) 
is  a  stroll  through  Lady  Morgan's  and  Maria  Edgeworth's 
well-traversed  country  as  is  also  The  Milesian  Chief  (18 12). 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  great  Sir  Walter  must  have 
glanced  at  the  pages  of  The  Milesian  Chief  before  writing 
The  Bride  of  Lammermoor.  The  description  of  the  castle 
of  the  O'Morvens  on  the  coast  of  Connaught,  Ireland, 
strangely  tallies  with  that  given  Wolfscrag  on  the  east 
coast  of  Scotland.  Armida,  the  heroine,  as  the  carriage 
approaches  the  entrance  to  the  one-time  O'Morven  strong- 
hold, in  a  runaway  is  rescued  from  going  over  the  precipice 
by  a  man  with  "a  long  curl  of  raven  hair"  who  afterwards 
proves  to  be  Connal,  the  rightful  owner  of  the  castle  and 
the  Milesian  chief.     The  moods  and  passions  of  Connal, 


Maturin's  "Milesian  Chief"  229 

as  he  courts  Arrrrida  of  the  usurping  occupants  of  his 
lands,  form  the  embryons  which  animate  Edgar  Ravens- 
wood    as   he    despairingly    wooes    Lucy   Ashton.     Lady 
Montclare  browbeats  her  daughter  Armida  so  as  to  force 
her  to  marry  Desmond,  the  brother  of  Connal's,  duping 
her  into  believing  that  by  such  a  course  only  could  she 
save  Connal's  life.     Seeing  no  other  way  to  avert  catas- 
trophe from  descending  on  the  head  of  the  man  she  loved, 
Armida  took  a  slow  poison  and  then  appeared  at  the 
marriage  altar.     Just  as  she  was  about  to  be  married  to 
Desmond  the  ceremony  was  interrupted  by  the  entrance 
of  mad  Ines  the  wife  of  Desmond,  who  by  Lady  Montclare 
had  been  fooled  into  thinking  Ines  long  since  dead.     This 
scene  in  the  chapel  could  have  suggested  to  Scott  how  far 
in  the  variations  of  marital  madness  he  could  go  with 
Lucy  Ashton.     Lady  Montclare  is  another  Lady  Ashton; 
but  somewhat  more  repentant  since  she  spends  the  rest  of 
her  days  in  a  convent.     Pride  of  house  and  accession  of 
lands  and  material  motives  had  led  her  on  to  a  cruel 
sacrifice  of  Ines  and  Armida  her  two  daughters.     Armida, 
after  Connal  had  been  shot,  in  the  paroxysms  of  the  poi- 
son and  mental  anguish  died  in  his  arms ;  and  Ines,  in  the 
agonies  of  delirium,  babbling  forth  gibberish  reminiscent 
of  love  for  Desmond,  had  shortly  preceded  her  sister. 
Thus  the  ruin  of  both  houses  resulted,  since  the  success 
of  one  had  been  temporarily  built  on  the  abasement  of  the 
other.     A  new  melodramatic  figure  in  fiction  to  be  noted 
in  this  novel  is  Endymion,  a  girl  who  has  been  brought  up 
as  a  boy  and  to  whom  there  had  been  no  revealment  at 
any  time  of  her  sex.     Maturin  presents  in  a  most  tender 
manner  the  way  in  which  Endymion  gradually  feels  the 
approaching  dawn  of  her  sex.     It  comes  about  by  the 
gradual   association   with   Desmond.     The   scene   where 
Desmond  tells  her  that  she  is  not  a  boy  but  a  girl  is 
absorbing.     That  virtue  is  born  in  a  woman  has  never 


230  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

been  more  clearly  proved  than  in  that  tense  moment 
when  Endymion  flees  to  preserve  her  honor  from  the  man 
to  whom  she  would  have  given  all  that  she  held  most  dear. 
Desmond's  mad  wife  kept  a  prisoner  in  the  chapel  is  a 
reminder  of  Laurentini  di  Udolpho  and  the  low  gurgle  of 
sounds  which  are  to  be  heard  in  Rochester's  manor. 

In  passing  from  the  Milesian  Chief  (1812)  to  Melmoth 
(1820)  there  is  in  Women,  or  Pour  et  Contre  (18 18)  the 
bewitching,  Italianized  Irish  prima  donna  Zaira  who 
represents  the  theatre  of  the  time  in  conflict  with  Metho- 
distic  religion  such  as  Eva  Went  worth  had  embraced. 
The  novel  is  the  struggle  of  the  woman  of  the  world  with 
the  woman  of  God ;  the  theatre  with  the  church.  Maturin 
creates  excellent  pathos  such  as  that  which  fills  the  eyes 
of  Eva,  when  in  the  Dublin  Theatre,  she  hears  Zaira  sing 
in  Arne's  Artaxerxes  and  sees  De  Courcy,  the  man  she 
loves,  waiting  expectantly  in  the  wings  for  the  exit  of  the 
famous  Zaira  who  is  afterwards  to  be  revealed  as  being 
her  own  mother.  The  dual-hearted  De  Courcy  follows 
the  operatic  star  to  Paris,  where  he  soon  heeds  the  warning 
given  him  by  his  French  friend  that  "genius  makes  a 
woman  a  charming  mistress,  but  the  devil  of  a  wife,  "  and 
swinging  from  a  contemplated  marriage  with  Zaira  he 
frantically  rushes  back  to  Ireland  to  his  abandoned  Eva. 
There  then  occur  two  death-bed  scenes  which  are  necessary 
to  make  Zaira,  who  had  followed  De  Courcy,  realize  that 
she  must  live  in  Ireland  with  her  hand  over  her  heart 
since  it  had  unconsciously  murdered  her  daughter  Eva, 
and  had  caused  De  Courcy  to  wend  his  way  to  the  tomb 
in  the  throes  of  remorse. 

This  figure  of  Zaira  on  the  stage  in  English  fiction  had 
come  to  stay.  In  Letitia  Landon's  Ethel  Churchill;  or  the 
Two  Brides  (1837)  Zaira  became  Lavinia  Fenton  who,  in 
spite  of  constant  unrequited  love,  helped  support  Maynard, 
who  loved  Ethel,  and  was  faithful  to  him  even  to  the 


Stage  Types  in  English  Fiction        231 

moment  of  his  death.  When  this  actress,  famous  as  Polly 
Peachum  in  Gay's  The  Beggar's  Opera,  afterwards  marries 
the  Duke  of  Bolton  we  know  that  it  is  a  mariage  de  con- 
venance,  against  which  the  whole  force  of  the  novel  has 
been  directed.  In  1842  Lytton's  Zanoniin  a  box  of  a  Nea- 
politan theatre  gazes  upon  the  beautiful  Viola  Pisani  and 
makes  her  an  operatic  success.  In  1853  Charles  Reade 
throws  a  whole  novel  into  the  theatre  to  portray  a  Peg 
Woffington;  and  in  the  same  year  Charlotte  Bronte  in 
Villette  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  wonderful  Rachel  acting. 
In  1878  William  Black's  Macleod  of  Dare  on  the  yacht 
went  down  in  insanity  and  murder  in  the  strife  between 
an  actress  and  himself.  And  in  the  nineties  Hall  Caine's 
Gloria  Quayle  destroyed  John  Storm;  and  Du  Maurier's 
Svengali  sat  in  a  box  so  as  to  mesmerize  golden  notes  out 
of  the  perfect  mouth  of  Trilby  who  stood  before  the  foot- 
lights oblivious  of  the  adoration  of  Taffy,  and  the  Laird, 
and  Little  Billee.  It  was  an  annus  mirabilis  (1818)  that 
saw  published  Scott's  Heart  of  Midlothian,  Rob  Roy; 
Jane  Austen's  Northanger  Abbey,  Persuasion;  Susan  E. 
Ferrier's  Marriage;  Mrs.  Shelley's  Frankenstein;  Thomas 
Love  Peacock's  Nightmare  Abbey;  and  Maturin's  Women, 
or  Pour  et  Contre. 

By  the  aid  of  The  Monk  Maturin  wrote  Melmoth  (1820), 
wherein  was  controverted  Lewis's  idea  that  in  extremity 
every  mortal  would  sell  his  soul  to  the  devil.  Ambrosio 
resigned  all  hope  of  salvation  for  earthly  safety.  Melmoth 
the  Wanderer  said  that  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
he  had  been  experimenting  with  countless  diabolic  devices 
on  men  and  women  and  had  not  been  able  to  find  Ambrosios 
who  to  gain  the  whole  world  would  lose  their  souls.  In 
the  preface  to  Melmoth  Maturin  wrote,  "is  there  one  of  us 
who  would,  at  this  moment,  accept  all"  that  man  could 
bestow,  or  earth  afford,  to  resign  the  hope  of  his  salvation  ? 
— No,  there  is  not  one — not  such  a  fool  on  earth,  were 


232  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  enemy  of  mankind  to  traverse  it  with  the  offer!" 
Neither  Stanton  nor  Moncada,  nor  Walberg,  nor  Elinor 
Mortimer,  succumbed  to  Melmoth ;  and  not  even  Immalee 
(Isidora),  the  wife  of  this  Zeluco-Schedoni-Ambrosio- 
Wandering  Jew-of-a-devil,  could  be  coerced  in  the  cell  of 
the  Inquisition  to  barter  her  soul  for  an  earthly  paradise 
on  the  Indian  isle  with  the  demon  she  loved.  The  Wan- 
derer's appearance  to  Moncada  and  to  his  young  relative 
Melmoth,  his  dreadful  presaging  dream,  and  his  awful 
physical  disintegration  as  the  hand  on  the  clock  of  eternity 
moves  round  to  strike  the  completion  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  clearly  prove  Maturin's  right  to  stand  supreme, 
alone,  on  the  pyramid  of  the  Gothic  romance,  which  had 
for  its  basic  stone  the  midnight  murder  of  Thomas  De- 
loney's  Thomas  Cole  of  Reading.  The  description  of  the 
gradual  disintegration  of  Melmoth  as  his  final  hour  of 
doom  approaches  surely  must  have  been  in  the  mind  of 
Emily  Bronte  as  she  portrayed  "the  queer  end"  of  the 
monster  Heathcliff  in  Wuthering  Heights  (1847). 

The  experiences  of  the  sane  Stanton  in  a  madhouse, 
into  which  he  had  been  thrust  by  a  relative,  are  a  part  of 
the  fabric  of  sworn  statements  obtained  from  bribable 
doctors  which  compelled  Alfred  Hardie  in  Charles  Reade's 
Hard  Cash  (1863)  to  battle  with  his  keepers  in  a  private 
asylum.  The  escape  of  Moncada  from  the  Inquisition  is  a 
faint  after-play  of  lightning  in  the  Gothic  sky  that  had 
illuminated  Godwin's  St.  Leon  in  the  house  of  a  Jew.  It 
has  always  seemed  to  me  that  Edgar  Allan  Poe  must  have 
familiarized  himself  with  Moncada's  vault,  mat,  reptiles, 
and  phosphoric  demons  on  the  walls  in  Madrid  before 
going  to  the  city  of  Toledo  for  the  scene  of  his  cruel  story 
The  Pit  and  the  Pendulum.  Maturin  throws  about  the 
auburn -tressed  Immalee  (Isidora),  alone  on  the  island  off 
the  mouth  of  the  Ganges,  a  fine  unicity  of  details  such  as 
had  orientalized  Anna  Maria  Porter's  Kara  Aziek  in  Bar- 


Maturin's  "Melmoth"  233 

bary  and  Persia.  It  is  this  girl,  who  says,  "The  world 
that  thinks  does  not  feel.  I  never  saw  the  rose  kill  the 
bud,"  that  receives  such  clear-cut  characterization  of 
tenderness  that  even  Melmoth  twice  abandons  his  pro- 
ject. That  she  should  learn  to  suffer  is  too  much  for  the 
monster.  In  one  place  where  this  doomed  girl  talks  we 
feel  that  Maturin  is  fingering  forward  to  the  style  that 
was  afterwards  used  by  Emily  Bronte  to  doom  Catharine 
Linton  in  Wuthering  Heights.  Emily  Bronte  could  be 
considered  as  the  author  of  these  utterances  of  Isidora: 

The  presages  that  visit  me  are  such  as  never  visited  mortal- 
ity in  vain.  I  have  always  believed,  that  as  we  approach  the 
invisible  world,  its  voice  becomes  more  audible  to  us  and  grief 
and  pain  are  very  eloquent  interpreters  between  us  and  eter- 
nity— quite  distinct  from  all  corporeal  suffering,  even  from  ail 
mental  terror,  is  that  deep  and  unutterable  impression  which 
is  alike  incommunicable  and  ineffaceable — it  is  as  if  heaven 
spoke  to  us  alone,  and  told  us  to  keep  its  secret,  or  divulge  it 
on  the  condition  of  never  being  believed.  .  .  .  Paradise !  .  .  .  . 
Will  he  be  there ! 

Catharine  Linton,  who  can  not  escape  her  Heathcliff 
doom  any  more  than  Immalee  (Isidora)  can  escape  her 
Melmoth,  prophetically  says: 

I'm  wearying  to  escape  into  that  glorious  world,  and  to  be 
always  there:  not  seeing  it  dimly  through  tears,  and  yearning 
for  it  through  the  walls  of  an  aching  heart ;  but  really  with  it, 
and  in  it.  .  .  .  I  shall  be  sorry  for  you.  I  shall  be  incomparably 
beyond  and  above  you  all.  .   .   .  I  won  der  he  won't  be  near  me! 

There  is  an  interrupted  marriage  ceremony  in  this 
novel;  and  there  are  in  the  four  volumes  evidences  of 
Mrs.  Shelley's  Frankenstein.  Melmoth  kills  Isidora's 
brother  just  as  Goethe's  Faust  kills  Valentine.  After  one 
has  thrown  aside  the  novel  there  is  keen  satisfaction  taken 


234  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  the  realization  that  no  heart  can  be  so  broken  that  it  can 
not  by  means  of  its  pieces  checkmate  the  apostate  angel. 

Maturin's  last  novel  The  Albigenses  (1824)  in  gorgeous 
pageant,  moving  in  panoply  of  war  between  the  Crusaders 
and  the  Albegeois,  filling  four  volumes  with  wolves,  were- 
wolf, maniac,  and  witchcraft,  working  woe  and  weal  to 
Genevieve,  Isabelle,  Amirald,  and  Sir  Paladour,  is  plainly 
modeled  after  Scott's  Ivanhoe.  Sir  Paladour  is  Ivanhoe; 
Isabelle  is  Rowena;  Genevieve  is  Rebecca;  and  Marie  de 
Mortemar  is  Ulrica  of  Torquilstone  Castle;  and  in  the 
midnight  passed  by  Sir  Paladour  with  the  lycanthrope,  or 
werewolf,  Maturin  paves  the  way  for  S.  R.  Crockett  in 
The  Black  Douglas  to  create  a  wolf-woman,  who  every 
night  gnaws  her  husband's  throat  and  breast.  De  Mon- 
fort  is  another  Front-de-Bceuf ;  Mattathias  is  similar  to 
Balfour  of  Burley  or  Habakkuk  Mucklewrath  in  Scott's 
Old  Mortality;  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse  is  Brian  de  Bois- 
Guilbert  moving  in  the  mentality  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
monk  Schedoni;  and  the  Lord  of  Courtenaye  meets  a 
Front-de-Bceuf  death  in  flames.  As  the  Blackwood's 
Magazine  once  suggested  the  novel  consists  of  four  volumes 
of  "vigor,  extravagance,  absurdity,  and  splendor";  and  we 
can  add  that  this  is  sane  criticism.  The  blast  of  a  horn  as 
in  Scott  generally  stays  some  villainous  proceeding;  and 
after  the  Bishop  of  Toulouse  has  been  poisoned  by  the 
holy  elements  at  the  altar  just  as  Rodin  was  poisoned  by 
the  holy  water  at  the  hands  of  Feringhea,  the  Indian  thug, 
in  Eugene  Sue's  The  Wandering  Jew,  we  are  glad,  when 
we  hear  the  bugle  blast  for  the  last  time  just  before  Marie 
de  Mortemar  flings  herself  from  the  bartizan  to  the  stony 
terrace  beneath. 

Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hamilton  by  The  Cottagers  of  Glcn- 
burnie  (1808)  created  a  space  on  the  horizon  where  were  to 
quiver  and  flicker  the  lights  and  shadows  of  Scottish  life  as 
they  beacon  forth  in  the  fiction  of  John  Gait,  John  Wilson, 


Mrs.  Hannah  More's  Mr.  Fantom      235 

George  Macdonald,  J.  M.  Barrie,  Dr.  John  Watson, 
George  Douglas  Brown,  and  S.  R.  Crockett.  "It's  the 
wull  of  God  "  that  dirt  and  death  should  engulf  farmer 
Mac  Clarty  and  his  son  Sandie.  "Ilka  place  has  just  its 
ain  gait"  and  "I  canna  be  fashed"  have  made  for  a  mid- 
den inside  and  outside  of  Mrs.  Mac  Clarty's  cottage.  Mrs. 
Mason's  plea  for  cleanliness  at  last  prevails  and  Glen- 
burnie  becomes  as  beautiful  as  its  name  suggests.  Mrs. 
Hamilton's  pronunciamento  of  sanitary  and  educational 
ideas  materially  and  morally  helped  to  lift  the  village  folk 
of  Scotland  out  of  that  slough  into  which  they  have  not 
since  fallen.  After  reading  the  anti-kailyard  House  with 
the  Green  Shutters  (1901)  we  feel  that  George  Douglas 
Brown  wrote  an  inverted  perversion  of  The  Cottagers  of 
Glenburnie. 

Mrs.  Hannah  More,  the  daughter  of  a  teacher  in 
Gloucestershire,  was  a  west  of  England  girl  hailing  from 
Bristol.  On  coming  to  London  she  soon  became  a  close 
friend  of  Johnson  and  Garrick  and  an  active  member 
of  the  Bas-Bleu  coterie.  She  was  a  mediocre  poetess,  a 
ninth-rate  dramatist,  an  excellent  writer  of  short  stories, 
and  succeeded  in  writing  one  substantial  novel.  Her 
short  stories  in  the  Cheap  Repository  tracts  (1795-98) 
were  written  for  the  amelioration  of  the  lower  and  middle 
classes.  The  good  woman  wrote  fiction  to  hold  in  check 
the  evil  influence  of  the  French  Revolution  on  state, 
church,  and  layman.  She  believed  that  philanthropy 
should  be  exercised  for  the  benefit  of  the  individual  rather 
than  for  the  salvation  of  the  social  unit.  One  poor  man 
on  the  road  to  ruin  saved  in  England  was  worth  all  benevo- 
lent ideas  wasted  on  the  down-trodden  masses  in  Poland. 
One  Sunday-school  kept  in  thriving  condition  in  England 
was  worth  all  the  Sunday-schools  carried  out  on  golden 
platters  of  charity  to  foreign  nations.  She  had  no  use  for 
the  philosophic  mind  such  as  fashioned  itself  after  the 


236  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

mental  mould  of  one  of  her  own  characters  called  Mr. 
Fantom.  It  will  be  remembered  that  while  Mr.  Fantom 
was  writing  a  treatise  on  universal  benevolence  he  was 
disturbed  by  seeing  a  cottage  burning  near  his  home. 
Mr.  Fantom  did  not  feel  called  upon  to  rescue  the  child 
whose  life  was  endangered  by  the  flames  since  he  only 
concerned  himself  with  cottages  burning  in  distant,  dis- 
mantled lands.  According  to  Mr.  Trueman  the  frontis- 
piece to  Mr.  Fantom's  treatise  should  have  been  Fantom's 
servant  William  on  the  gibbet.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
Mr.  Fantom's  closest  servant  William  should  have  been 
hanged  for  murder,  thus  serving  as  a  practical  illustration 
of  the  blessed  effects  of  such  a  philosopher's  life  course. 

Coelebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife  (1809)  is  a  treatise  on  practi- 
cal piety  which,  if  any  son  of  Adam  will  read,  he  will  make 
no  mistake  as  to  the  selection  of  an  Eve  in  the  garden 
thickly  populated  with  questionable  Eves.  As  soon  as 
Lucilla  Stanley  was  born  Coeleb's  father  and  Mr.  Stanley 
simultaneously  formed  a  wish  that  it  might  be  possible  to 
perpetuate  their  friendship  by  a  future  union  of  the  two 
children.  Accordingly  Lucilla  was  carefully  trained  in  all 
that  would  make  her  a  fit  bride  for  Coelebs,  who  by  his 
schooling  had  become  even  more  ideal  than  Sir  Charles 
Grandison.  When  Coelebs,  after  a  course  in  Miltonic 
poetry,  at  the  correct  moment  proposed  to  Lucilla  she  said 
neither  yes  nor  no,  but  gently  referred  him  to  her  father. 
The  novel,  once  widely  read,  is  a  morality  play  with  all 
kinds  of  religious  entertainments  going  on  in  the  wings ; 
and  it  is  written  in  a  style  that  is  strongly  animated  by 
an  ethical  movement,  the  impetus  of  which  is  that  the 
"implantation  of  a  virtue  is  the  eradication  of  a  vice." 
Mrs.  Hannah  More's  Practical  Piety  applied  to  the  mar- 
riage problem  is  the  idea  floated  successfully  before  the 
footlights  in  the  biblical  Coelebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife. 
Lucilla,  a  feminine  Daniel  Deronda,  made  a  way  for  the 


Mary  Brunton's  "Self-Control"        237 

entrance  of  such  puritanic  girls  as  Hawthorne's  Phcebe, 
Priscilla,  and  Hilda. 

In  1 8 10  was  published  Mary  Brunton's  Self -Control 
which  shows  Fielding's  snares  set  for  a  heroine  in  Tom 
Jones  and  the  survival  of  Richardsonian  sentiment.  In 
the  first  chapter  Hargrave  attempts  the  seduction  of  the 
immaculate  Laura  Montreville ;  and  afterwards,  in  London 
at  Lady  Pelham's,  Laura's  honor  was  again  threatened  by 
Colonel  Hargrave  in  much  the  same  manner  as  Sophia 
Western's  was  by  Lord  Fellamar  in  the  house  of  Lady 
Bellaston's.  After  suffering  nearly  all  the  agonies  in- 
flicted on  Clarissa  Harlowe  by  Richardson,  Laura  was 
abducted  to  Canada  where  among  the  Indians  she  was 
compelled  always  to  sleep  with  a  knife  in  her  bosom  in 
order  to  preserve  her  integrity.  Colonel  Hargrave 
crosses  the  Atlantic  to  force  a  marriage,  from  which  she 
escapes  by  an  emotional  flight  in  a  canoe,  compelling 
nature  in  its  turmoil  of  rapids  to  do  obeisance  to  the 
goddess  of  self-control.  Laura  at  all  times  emotionally 
belonged  to  Hargrave,  but  the  course  of  self-control  forced 
a  safe  marriage  of  herself  to  De  Courcy.  The  reader  com- 
forts himself  along  with  Laura  at  the  thought  of  the  future 
meeting,  which  would  take  place  between  herself  and 
repentant  Hargrave  (Lovelace)  in  Heaven.  In  Discipline 
(1814)  there  are  recognizable  the  beauties  of  the  High- 
lands, which  were  not  appreciated  because  of  the  ante- 
cedent glories  of  such  a  background  used  by  Scott  in 
Waverley  (1814);  and  in  the  unfinished  Emmeline  (1819) 
there  can  be  detected  a  return  to  Mrs.  Amelia  Opie's 
morbidness,  since  it  delineates  a  girl  who  can  find  no  hap- 
piness after  marrying  her  seducer. 

From  1796  to  1816  Jane  Austen  wrote  novels  which 
contemporaneous  critical  opinion  classified  as  being  equal 
in  quality  to  those  of  Frances  Burney  and  Maria  Edge- 
worth.     This  Hampshire  genius  saw  seventeen  years  pass 


238  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

after  writing  her  first  manuscript  Pride  and  Prejudice 
before  it  was  published.  Ncrthanger  Abbey  written  in 
1798  went  for  £10  to  a  publisher  in  Bath  who  afterwards 
cheerfully  surrendered  the  manuscript  in  order  to  get 
back  his  money ;  and  it  saddens  one  to  think  that  this  novel 
and  Persuasion  did  not  see  the  light  of  print  until  after  the 
death  of  Jane. 

Sense  and  Sensibility  (181 1),  written  in  1797,  shows 
that  Jane  Austen  knew  Frances  Burney's  Camilla  and  Mrs. 
Ann  RadclifFe's  Ellena  di  Rosalba.  The  delineation  of 
Marianne,  the  seventeen-year-old  heroine,  who  believed 
that  she  would  never  be  happy  with  a  man,  whose  taste 
did  not  correspond  to  her  own,  and  whose  heart  must 
never  have  had  a  previous  attachment  or  must  never  be 
covered  by  a  flannel  waistcoat,  was  the  beginning  of  that 
death-dealing  blow  which  was  given  to  girls  all  "teary" 
around  the  eyelashes  by  Northanger  Abbey,  written  in 
1798.  Elinor,  Marianne's  sister,  is  the  antidote  to  sensi- 
bility, since  she  represents  common  sense  controlling  all 
outward  emotion,  such  as  is  exemplified  in  the  way  that 
she  suffers  in  her  love  for  Ferrars.  This  Elinor  carries 
two  tragedies  on  her  shoulders,  suffering  for  self  and  the 
sister  who  has  such  distracted  love  for  Willoughby. 
Elinor  seems  to  be  a  sign-post  upon  which  knocks  continu- 
ally the  hammer  of  unexpected  bad  news,  so  that  readers 
can  grasp  that  sense  is  a  foundation  upon  which  everything 
good  can  be  built.  She  helps  Marianne  pass  through  the 
troubled  waters  of  Willoughby's  "It  is  all  at  an  end,  my 
dear,"  and  with  prim  propriety  she  delicately  awaits 
the  issue  of  the  Edward  Ferrars-Lucy  affair.  Elinor  is  at 
last  rewarded  for  her  fortitude  by  seeing  Robert  Ferrars 
marry  Lucy  so  that  Edward  can  be  hers,  and  by  being 
able  to  stop  the  aquatic  flow  in  the  eyes  of  her  sister,  who, 
on  becoming  clear-eyed,  sees  how  fortunate  for  herself  the 
Eliza  episode  was  in  the  life  of  Willoughby.     Marianne 


Austen's  "Sense  and  Sensibility"       239 

philosophically  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  selfishness 
(Willoughby)  could  never  have  made  happy  a  piece  of 
poverty  like  herself  manoeuvring  in  the  guise  of  beauty. 
Thus  she  turns  a  sensible  head  to  recline  upon  a  flannel 
waistcoat,  beneath  which  a  manly  heart  caught  on 
the  rebound  is  beating.  Out  of  Richardson's  character, 
Lovelace,  Jane  Austen  created  a  Willoughby  in  order  to 
shatter  to  pieces  the  sensibility  of  Marianne.  After  care- 
fully considering  the  seduction  of  Eliza  by  Willoughby 
we  ask:  Why  did  not  Jane  Austen  provide  death  for  the 
scoundrel  in  the  duel  with  Colonel  Brandon  as  Richardson 
supplied  death  to  Lovelace  at  the  hands  of  Colonel  Mor- 
den?  The  only  punishment  he  received  was  domestic 
unhappiness  which,  in  his  case,  was  a  kind  of  tolerable 
comfort  that  foreshadows  what  George  Eliot  gave  to 
Godfrey  Cass  in  depriving  him  of  the  love  of  his  daughter 
Eppie.  Thus,  as  far  back  as  the  year  1797,  we  see  a  fore- 
runner of  Godfrey  Cass  in  John  Willoughby. 

In  Pride  and  Prejudice  (18 13)  witty,  sarcastic,  sensible, 
bright-eyed  Elizabeth  Bennet,  whose  physical  beauty 
we  forget  as  often  as  Jane  Eyre's  plainness  in  the  intellect- 
ual and  spiritual  loveliness  constantly  displayed  and 
emphasized,  and  whose  judgment  is  as  self-condemnatory 
as  Jane  Eyre's,  breaks  the  lance  of  Darcy's  pride  against 
the  broken  wand  of  her  own  prejudice.  In  contrast  to 
Elizabeth  is  her  sister  Jane,  whose  physical  beauty  is 
always  emphasized.  Bingley,  the  mediocre  good-natured 
lover  of  Jane,  is  the  shadow  of  Edward  Ferrars  in  Sense 
and  Sensibility;  and  Wickham,  the  handsome  rascal, 
is  a  connecting  link  between  Willoughby,  the  seducer  of 
Eliza,  and  Henry  Crawford  who  in  Mansfield  Park  by 
losing  Fanny  Price  threw  away  a  pearl  richer  than  all  his 
tribe.  Behind  the  humorous  characterizations  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Bennet  stands  tragedy  touching  their  elbows, 
and  it  is  tragedy  that  Jane  Austen  does  not  chose  to  ex- 


240  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

plain.  Would  that  she  had  done  so !  But  nothing  greater 
than  the  Eliza  episode,  or  the  tragedy  of  a  twisted  ankle, 
in  Sense  and  Sensibility,  or  a  Louisa  Musgrove  falling 
from  the  Cobb  at  Lyme  in  Persuasion,  is  allowed  to  creep 
into  Austenic  fiction.  The  details  of  domestic  discord 
are  not  for  Jane  Austen's  pen  except  as  these  may  contri- 
bute to  make  readers  leave  her  novels  filled  with  a  high 
quality  of  mental  laughter.  We  never  think  of  Mr.  Ben- 
net  as  having  been  made  the  worse  because  of  his  cackling 
wife,  but  as  being  infinitely  better  off  since  by  his  training 
he  knows  how  to  pile  up  fun  for  his  troupe  of  comediennes 
such  as  when  we  see  him  standing  before  his  daughter 
Elizabeth,  who  had  just  been  proposed  to  by  Mr.  Collins, 
saying,  "Your  mother  will  never  see  you  again,  if  you  do 
not  marry  Mr.  Collins,  and  I  will  never  see  you  again, 
if  you  do." 

Mansfield  Park  had  its  pains,  and  Portsmouth  no  pleas- 
ures, not  even  a  fire,  for  a  heroine  who  in  a  tragedy  of 
little  boresome  things  was  compelled  to  endure  all  kinds 
of  discomfort  before  securing  an  Edmund.  Mansfield 
Park  (1814)  is  the  tragedy  of  being  misunderstood.  At 
length  at  a  ball  Fanny  Price  is  no  longer  misinterpreted, 
but  is  loved  and  appreciated  by  all  since  she  loves  because 
she  has  not  the  heart  to  refuse  to  love  everybody.  Nor  in 
Emma  (18 16)  can  we  forget  the  countenances  and  intimate 
dialogue  of  those  who  frequent  the  roadway  between 
Hartfield  and  Highbury.  Whether  we  are  at  Donwell,  or 
Randalls,  or  at  the  Crown  for  the  purpose  of  dancing,  or 
off  on  an  excursion  to  Box  Hill,  our  associates  Knightley, 
Weston,  Churchill,  Mrs.  Elton,  Woodhouse,  faithful  Perry, 
Miss  Taylor,  the  guileless  Harriet,  the  talk-a-pace  Miss 
Bates,  and  Jane  Fairfax,  are  all  following  their  leader,  the 
fascinating,  exasperating  Emma,  who  is  their  life  as  well 
as  our  own. 

N orthanger  Abbey  (18 18)  demonstrates  that  one  can  never 


Austen's  "Northanger  Abbey"         241 

be  tired  of  Bath  even  though  he  is  continually  listening 
to  Mrs.  Allen,  who  can  only  talk  of  dresses  and  expected 
dressmakers,  and  Mrs.  Thorpe  who  can  only  talk  of  daugh- 
ters. The  reader,  however,  feels  that  the  scenery  at  Bath 
does  not  meritoriously  measure  up  to  the  landscape  touches 
in  the  first  part  of  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho;  and  he  is  glad 
as  Uncle  Mat  in  Humphry  Clinker  to  leave  behind  him  the 
pumphalls  of  Bath  in  order  to  go  into  Gloucestershire  to  find 
an  abbey  in  which  there  may  be  ' '  some  awful  memorials  of 
an  injured  and  ill-fated  nun. "  The  reader  enters  North- 
anger  Abbey  before  he  is  aware  of  its  existence,  thereby 
missing  the  sight  of  Gothic  windows  reverentially  blessed 
by  the  beams  of  a  splendidly  dying  sun.  After  entering 
the  Tilney  mansion,  on  a  stormy  nigljt,  he  is  ensconced 
in  a  room  so  that  by  candlelight  there  can  be  revealed  to 
him  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  furnishings  (of  course  including 
a  manuscript)  which  make  the  candle  go  out  to  cause  terror 
and  a  sleepless  night.  And  the  next  morning  the  reader  is 
sold  again  when  the  re-examined  manuscript  reveals  itself 
as  an  inventory  of  laundry  billed  goods.  Northanger 
Abbey,  written  in  1798,  after  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe  had  run 
her  course  of  Gothic  terror,  though  it  did  not  get  into  print 
till  1 81 8,  shows  a  sane  sentiment  directed  against  the 
absurdities  of  the  affectations  of  Gothic  heroines  in  con- 
temporary romance  such  as  Eaton  Barrett  had  parodied 
on  the  pages  of  a  novel  The  Heroine  five  years  before  the 
Austenic  parody  came  out.  Both  Barrett  and  Jane 
Austen  helped  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  use  rightly  in  romance 
that  which  is  actually  meritorious  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
fiction.  Mrs.  Lennox's  Lady  Arabella,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
Adeline,  Jane  Austen's  Catherine  Morland,  and  Barrett's 
Cherubina  de  Willoughby,  were  toned  down  by  Scott  to 
create  such  a  heroine  as  domestic  Mary  Avenel  wedded 
to  romantic  Halbert  Glendinning  at  the  close  of  The 
Monastery. 
16 


242  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Persuasion  (1818)  with  its  vignettes  of  Kellyinch,  Bath, 
and  Lyme,  presents  a  mingling  of  comic  and  tragic  errors. 
A  light  setting  of  moods  has  been  conceived  for  the  Mus- 
groves  and  a  slightly  heavy  one  for  Mrs.  Smith.  Lady 
Russell  has  been  selected  as  the  adviser  and  adjuster  of 
the  "uncertainty  of  all  human  events  and  calculations." 
The  recessive  heroine  of  the  light  tragi-comedy  is  Anne 
Elliot  "who  knew  that  when  she  played  she  was  giving 
pleasure  only  to  herself"  and  that  this  was  no  new  sen- 
sation. Since  the  death  of  her  mother  her  lot  had  been  to 
sigh  out  when  pain  was  over  so  that  the  remembrance  of  it 
often  was  her  only  pleasure.  At  twenty-seven  she  realizes 
that  "  a  persuadable  temper  might  sometimes  be  as  much 
in  favor  of  happiness  as  a  very  resolute  character. "  Her 
manners  are  as  consciously  right  as  they  are  invariably 
gentle;  and  the  only  flaw  momentarily  detectable  is  that 
of  expressing  herself  as  exquisitely  gratified  because  Went- 
worth  for  her  sake  has  become  jealous  of  Mr.  Elliot. 
Anne,  after  listening  to  the  tragedy  that  came  into  Mrs. 
Smith's  life  at  the  hands  of  the  villain  Mr.  Elliot,  who 
had  married  for  money  and  traveled  on  Sunday,  learns 
that  "there  are  so  many  who  forget  to  think  seri- 
ously till  it  is  almost  too  late."  Mrs.  Smith  was  to 
our  unobtrusive  heroine  an  ideal  who  could  help  her  to 
step  to  the  front  as  mistress  of  every  critical  situation 
in  life. 

A  submissive  spirit  might  be  patient,  a  strong  understanding 
would  supply  resolution,  but  here  was  something  more;  here 
was  that  elasticity  of  mind,  that  disposition  to  be  comforted, 
that  power  of  turning  readily  from  evil  to  good,  and  of  finding 
employment  which  carried  her  out  of  herself,  which  was  from 
nature  alone.  It  was  the  choicest  gift  of  Heaven,  and  Anne 
viewed  her  friend  as  one  of  those  instances  in  which,  by  merci- 
ful appointment,  it  seems  designed  to  counterbalance  almost 
every  other  want. 


Austen's  "Emma"  243 

This  gentle  Anne  of  fortitude  who  says  that  a  sick  chamber 
may  often  furnish  the  worth  of  volumes  is  the  most 
pathetic  heroine  of  Jane  Austen's;  and  there  have  been 
readers  who  have  wept  over  her  sufferings  until  she 
receives  at  the  hands  of  her  Creator  the  infinite  joy  of 
securing  Wentworth  and  all  that  makes  a  heaven  on  earth. 
Perhaps  it  is  time  to  slip  away  from  the  "exquisite 
touch"  of  the  "little  bow-wow  strain"  to  the  "Big  Bow- 
wow strain"  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  who  said  in  October, 
1 815,  in  The  Quarterly  Review,  that  the  genius  of  Chawton 
had  performed  one  of  the  most  difficult  feats  in  producing 
a  fiction  of  common  occurrences  "within  the  extensive 
range  of  criticism  which  general  experience  offers  to  every 
reader."  While  confessing  that  he  could  never  hope  to 
please  his  readers  with  a  close  analysis  of  common  char- 
acters walking  arm  in  arm  with  common  incidents  such  as 
had  been  created  by  the  author  of  Emma,  Scott  seemed  to 
be  glad  that  he  had  determined  in  his  own  fiction  to  soar 
above  the  "ordinary  probabilities  of  life,"  and  that  Jane 
Austen  could  stand  for  all  he  cared  alone  in  the  class  of 
such  work  as  Emma,  which,  though  its  force  of  narrative 
was  "conducted  with  much  neatness  and  point,  and  a  quiet 
yet  comic  dialogue,  in  which  the  characters  of  the  speakers 
evolve  themselves  with  dramatic  effect,"  possessed  faults 
necessarily  arising  out  of  the  minute  detail  of  the  plan. 
"Characters  of  folly  or  simplicity,  such  as  those  of  old 
Woodhouse  and  Miss  Bates,  are  ridiculous  when  first 
presented;  but,  if  too  often  brought  forward  or  too  long 
dwelt  upon,  their  prosing  is  apt  to  become  as  tiresome  in 
fiction  as  in  real  society."  Thus,  Scott  expressed  ad- 
mirable disapprobation  of  that  class  of  fiction,  the  chief 
function  of  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  flinging  forth  of 
little  boresome  things  which,  as  we  well  know,  were  the 
legacy  of  Fanny  Burney  and  Maria  Edgeworth;  but  in 
reading  Jane  Austen,   who  possessed   the  narrow,   sure 


244  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Japanese  drawing  instinct  of  patterning  to  perfection,  we 
should  always  remember  that  the  beauty  of  the  truth  of 
life  is  often  revealed  by  little,  boresome  things. 

And  at  this  point  before  taking  up  the  Waverley  Novels 
a  last  word  should  be  said  about  Austenic  fiction  to  note 
that  in  its  use  of  comedy,  or  tragi-comedy,  instead  of 
tragedy,  no  feeble  analysis  of  life  results  since  Jane  Austen 
Meredith-like  makes  the  Comic  Spirit  use  tragedy  as  a 
mask  behind  which  is  always  concealed  the  utmost  nobility 
of  outlook.  Behind  the  titterings  and  roarings  of  folly 
stands  the  wisdom  of  the  world  ready  to  forgive  and  adjust 
the  mistakes  of  fools;  and  according  to  Jane  Austen  this 
charity  on  the  part  of  the  wisdom  of  the  few  issues  out  of 
the  largess  of  love — as  for  example  when  Darcy  deems  it 
necessary  to  be  present  to  arrange  the  marriage  of  eloping 
giddy  Lydia  to  lying  licentious  Wickham.  Love  compels 
proud  wisdom  (Darcy)  to  move  among  the  boresome 
things  of  life  so  as  to  bend  to  pick  up  for  an  immortal 
possession  the  heart  of  bright-eyed  Elizabeth  Bennet, 
whose  reputation  must  not  be  tarnished  by  any  opinion 
further  passed  by  the  world  on  Lydia  and  Wickham 's 
conduct  which,  if  wisdom  in  humility  had  not  chosen  to 
consider,  would  never  have  moved  toward  the  marriage- 
altar  for  the  world's  forgiveness.  The  wisdom  of  the 
world  must  correct  the  folly  of  the  world :  folly  gives  wis- 
dom always  something  to  do.  Thus  wisdom  with  larger 
other  eyes  than  ours  views  our  faults;  and,  when  we  stoop 
or  fall  to  be  dragged  in  folly's  endless  train,  it  as  a  redemp- 
tive agent  makes  allowance  for  us  all.  Providence  seems 
at  first  to  be  a  stranger,  but  it  is  friend  Wisdom  in  disguise 
entering  the  arena  at  love's  beck  and  call  to  put  the 
monster  Folly  hors  de  combat.  Jane  Austen  at  the  bound- 
aries of  comedy's  domain  just  where  tragedy's  territory  of 
pain  begins  turns  her  characters  back  into  life's  smooth 
paths  of  peace.     They  are  driven  back  by  the  wisdom 


Austen's  "Pride  and  Prejudice"        245 

of  others  who  love  them.  We  learn  by  comedy;  whereas 
by  tragedy  it  is  almost  too  late  to  learn.  In  Persuasion 
Anne  Elliot  sees  that  most  people  do  not  learn  to  think 
seriously  until  it  is  almost  too  late,  until  after  they  have 
crossed  the  dead-line.  In  Pride  and  Prejudice  Darcy  hav- 
ing discarded  pride  finds  it  easy  to  become  a  brother-in-law 
to  foolish  Lydia.  Folly  serves  wisdom  at  every  turn;  for 
even  the  folly  of  Lady  Catherine  de  Bourgh  makes  wisdom 
(Darcy)  certain  of  the  fact  that  it  has  won  the  utmost 
passion  of  Elizabeth's  heart.  And  all  that  the  virago,  who 
has  opposed  the  marriage  of  Darcy  to  Elizabeth,  can  do  is 
at  last  to  condescend  to  enter  the  polluted  precincts  of 
Pemberley  to  visit  her  nephew  out  of  curiosity  to  see  how 
Elizabeth  as  a  wife  is  wearing  to  him.  Thus,  inasmuch  as 
her  tragi-comedy  proves  to  be  the  comic  side  of  wisdom, 
Jane  Austen  goes  back  to  Henry  Fielding  and  forward  to 
George  Meredith,  who  by  causing  us  intellectually  to 
laugh  at  fools  and  eccentric  individuals  makes  us  later 
learn  to  love  them  all  the  better;  and  thus  the  simpletons 
(even  a  Wickham)  profit  by  seeing  how  others  have 
laughed  at  their  past  idiotic  conduct  and  turn  as  best  they 
can  to  worship  thereafter  at  wisdom's  shrine. 


CHAPTER  IX 

Sir  "Walter  Scott,  Thomas  Love  PeacocK, 
Lady  Caroline  Lamb,  Svrsan  Edmonstone 
Ferrier,  Mary  Wollstonecraft  SHelley, 
Thomas  Hope,  and  Mary  Rvissell  Mitford 

ON  the  day  that  Scott  in  rummaging  for  fishing  tackle 
chanced  to  find  the  manuscript  of  Waverley  which 
he  had  written  in  1805,  it  was  figuratively  the 
disinterment  of  the  corpse  of  Gothic  romance  that  had 
been  so  humorously  buried  by  Eaton  Barrett  in  The 
Heroine  (1813).  When  Waverley  was  published  in  1814,  it 
was  the  restoration  of  II  Castello  di  Grimgothico;  and  on 
the  ice  covering  the  moat  beneath  its  frowning  towers  ap- 
peared the  "Wizard  of  the  North"  with  a  Highland  clay- 
more with  which  he  drove  ashore  Jane  Austen  and  Eaton 
Barrett,  who  with  their  skates  had  been  derisively  decorat- 
ing the  ice-field  with  precise  and  fanciful  figures  of  com- 
mon sense  and  nonsense.  And  shortly  thereafter  the  sun 
arose,  the  ice  melted,  the  drawbridge  was  lowered,  and 
medievalism  disguised  as  a  bandit  chief  of  sixty  years 
since  appeared  beneath  the  portcullis. 

Waverley  at  first  glance  seems  to  be  a  romance  of 
chivalry  inimical  to  a  tale  of  manners,  but  this  is  not  true. 
It  is  rather  a  clever  blending  of  the  two.  The  passions  of 
men  and  women  are  analyzed  in  a  barbaric  garb  which, 
when  thrown  aside,  is  picked  up  as  the  recognizable  rai- 
ment which  for  ages  has  clothed  them.     In  18 14  a  novel 

246 


Scott's  "Waverley"  247 

of  Scott's  did  not  have  to  be  a  tale  of  other  times,  because 
according  to  Scott's  idea,  a  tale  of  the  present  is  always 
similar  to  a  tale  of  other  times  when  it  presents  present 
passions  in  one  halo  of  romanticism  and  realism.  Waverley 
is  romanticism  of  manners  and  sentiment  in  modern  every- 
day life.  The  romantic  manners,  habits,  and  feelings  in 
Waverley,  so  far  as  its  fictitious  characters  are  concerned, 
are  precisely  those  which  have  a  foundation  in  fact.  In 
the  Highlands  of  Scotland  ordinary  life  had  fairly  bristled 
with  extraordinary  banditti  hidden  behind  bracken  bush 
and  broom.  Scott  whistled  back  through  sixty  years 
and  substantial  romanticism  sprang  up  such  as  one 
never  dreamed  the  time  could  have  concealed  or  revealed. 
These  actual,  romantic  banditti  in  realistic  detail  of  dia- 
logue and  environment  act  far  differently  from  those  infest- 
ing the  Apennines  around  Udolpho's  turrets.  We  know 
that  Dr.  John  Moore's  banditti  on  the  slopes  of  Vesuvius 
are  manufactured,  for  they  were  impostors  hired  for  the 
occasion  by  Zeluco,  but  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  are  genuine, 
possessing  the  marrow  of  the  barbarity  of  Gothicism  in 
their  bones.  The  trouble,  however,  is  that  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe  fails  to  make  people  feel  that  these  extraordinary 
fellows  are  real.  She  cannot  live  her  scenes,  or  live  in  her 
banditti,  thus  making  her  readers  view  them  as  tin-toy 
outlaws.  Scott  came  along,  took  them  and  threw  them 
over  into  Scotland  so  that  the  magic  touch  of  heather 
caused  them  with  renewed  Gothic  vigor  Antaeus-like  to 
spring  up  not  as  dwarfs  but  as  giants  of  outlaw  life.  Scott 
makes  us  feel  that  the  extraordinary,  the  Gothic,  is  true. 
In  Waverley  there  is  Gothicism  all  the  way  from  the 
Highlands  to  the  prison  in  Carlisle.  The  Frenchified, 
Catholicized  Flora  Mac-Ivor  bids  us  look  at  a  waterfall 
to  listen  not  only  to  its  music  but  to  that  of  her  harp ;  and 
when  sweeter  music  is  heard  it  is  that  of  her  own  tongue 
reciting  Ariosto's  page.     Not  only  is  she  recognizable  as  a 


248  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

figure  pulled  from  the  tomes  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  but  as 
one  who,  on  her  way  to  rebirth  in  Scotland,  had  passed 
by  Lady  Morgan's  wild  Irish  girl  Glorvina  from  whom 
substance  was  given  for  the  creation  of  a  true,  wild  Scotch 
girl.  Scott,  too,  made  use  of  Maria  Edgeworth's  banshee 
making  it  the  Grey  Spirit  bidding  Fergus  Mac-Ivor 
acknowledge  his  coming  death.  In  The  Monastery  this 
Grey  Spirit  assumes  the  form  of  the  White  Lady  of  Avenel 
sighing  in  the  breeze  the  dissolution  of  Dame  Glendinning. 
Moreover,  Scott  goes  back  to  Fielding  to  procure  a 
Jonathan  Wild  who  is  redeemed  by  being  thrown  into 
the  Highlands,  and  by  having  such  devoted  love  as  that 
given  him  by  a  sister,  Flora  Mac-Ivor. 

In  Guy  Mannering  (1815),  whether  with  sentimental 
Julia  Mannering  or  musically  inclined  Bertram  "dreeing 
his  weird, "  we  are  never  very  far  removed  from  the  gipsy 
or  smuggler  banditti.  From  the  placid  lakes  of  Cumber- 
land and  Westmoreland  to  the  ruined  castle  of  Ellangowan 
echoing  the  roar  of  the  Solway  no  man's  life  is  safe.  Guy 
Mannering  is  a  folk-ballad  put  into  action  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  The  knight  returns  from  India  to  reclaim  an 
estate  and  a  lady  fair.  The  enveloping  action  is  astrology. 
Second-sight,  fate,  and  predestination,  frame  the  sibylline 
utterances  of  Meg  Merrilies  to  make  the  might  of  Bertram 
right  on  Ellangowan's  height.  The  notes  of  the  flageolet 
sounded  by  Bertram  somehow  marshal  us  to  the  climax 
of  the  ballad  narrative  as  the  peasant  damsel  sings, 

Are  these  the  links  of  Forth,  she  said, 

Or  are  they  the  crooks  of  Dee, 
Or  the  bonnie  woods  of  Warroch  Head 

That  I  so  fain  would  see? 

These  lyrical  lines  roll  away  the  mists  of  sixteen  years,  so 
that  Bertram  recognizes  where  he  was  when  kidnapped  by 


Scott's  "The  Antiquary"  249 

Dirk  Hatteraick.  This  unlinking  one's  fate  by  music 
near  the  Solway  Scott  kept  in  mind  for  fuller  range  on 
Wandering  Willie's  fiddle  in  Redgauntlet.  Upon  our 
looking  at  the  novel  after  a  hundred  years  have  passed 
away,  outside  of  Meg  a-cursing  and  Meg  a-dying,  there 
are  other  evidences  of  great  characterization,  such  as  that 
given  to  Dominie  Sampson  and  to  the  bullet-headed 
Dandie  Dinmont  whom,  with  his  wife  Ailie,  alas !  we  do 
not  see  often  enough.  Dandie  Dinmont  has  a  right  to 
belong  to  Scott's  triumvirate,  the  other  two  members 
of  which  are  Rob  Roy  and  Claverhouse. 

The  Antiquary  (18 16)  by  many  critics,  among  them 
Ruskin,  has  been  considered  the  best  of  Scott's  novels. 
How  such  good  critics  could  arrive  at  such  an  estimate 
is  not  beyond  comprehension;  for  Jonathan  Oldbuck  in 
the  acidity  of  his  humorous  characterization  is  a  master- 
piece, and  Lovel  is  interesting  especially  when  he  is  being 
perilously  swung  to  and  fro  against  the  side  of  the  precipice 
after  the  rescue  of  Sir  Arthur  Wardour  and  daughter  has 
been  effected,  or  when  he  is  gazing  upon  the  tapestry  in  the 
Green  Room  and  at  the  apparition  which  glides  before  him. 
The  old  blue-gowned  beggar  Edie  Ochiltree  on  the  sands 
at  high-tide  gives  promise  of  becoming  a  most  vitalized 
character  as  he  determines  to  face  death  with  Sir  Arthur 
Wardour  and  daughter.  He  flashes  out  as  a  hero  in  the 
words,  "At  the  back  o'  a  dyke,  in  a  wreath  o'  snaw,  or  in 
the  wame  o'  a  wave,  what  signifies  how  the  auld  gaber- 
lunzie  dies";  but,  afterwards  in  the  narrative,  he  fails  to 
live  up  to  the  promise  of  great  action.  Scott  had  destined 
him  for  the  chimney  corner  and  therefore  tears  of  inertia 
are  to  flow  from  his  eyes  down  his  white  beard.  As  a 
wandering  vagabond  he  serves  as  a  good  preparatory 
sketch  for  Wandering  Willie. 

In  The  Black  Dwarf  (18 16)  we  make  a  psychological 
study  of  the  baneful  effects  of  disappointed  love  as  caused 


250  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

by  deformity  in  Elshie  (Sir  Edward  Mauley) .  From  the 
time  that  we  first  see  his  pixie  figure  on  Mucklestane  Moor 
by  moonlight  till  he  gives  the  rose  to  Isabella  Vere,  he 
seems  to  be  a  Lilliputian  king  reigning  over  all  that  is  vile 
in  human  passions ;  but  from  this  time  on  he  begins  to  grow 
in  ethical  stature,  and  in  the  chapel  of  the  castle  of  Ellies- 
law,  as  he  glides  from  behind  the  tomb  of  her  to  whom  he 
had  been  affianced  to  interrupt  the  forced  marriage  cere- 
mony taking  place  between  Sir  Frederick  Langley  and 
Isabella  Vere,  he  becomes  the  exponent  of  all  that  is  noble 
in  generous  action.  "What  Sir  Edward  Mauley  was  not 
able  to  secure  in  life  Earnscliff  receives  at  his  hands.  Love 
forces  a  renunciation  of  all  revenge,  for  Isabella  was  the 
daughter  of  the  woman  the  dwarf  had  loved  and  lost. 
Thus  the  tragedy  of  physical  barriers  was  re-emphasized 
in  the  realm  of  love-making  in  English  fiction. 

Scott  in  Old  Mortality  (1816)  transfers  us  to  a  regiou 
where  we  are  surrounded  by  fanatical  Cameronian  out- 
laws, who  are  as  bad  as  the  troopers  clinging  to  Claver- 
house.  Balfour  of  Kinloch  and  Habakkuk  Muckle wrath 
at  Loudon  Hill  and  Bothwell  Brig  are  as  formidable  ap- 
paritions of  Apollyon  as  Viscount  Dundee  and  Dalzell. 
Morton  lying  on  the  table  to  be  tortured  to  death  as  a 
sacrifice  to  the  God  of  Israel  is  balanced  by  Macbriar 
whose  leg  is  fixed  in  the  boot  to  be  tapped  by  the  mallet 
at  the  Duke  of  Lauderdale's  cruel  mandate.  Edith  Bel- 
lenden,  Lady  Bellenden,  Mause  Headrigg,  and  Cuddie 
Headrigg,  are  fine  portraits,  but  Claverhouse  is  fearfully 
alive  just  as  we  see  him  in  Wandering  Willie's  tale  with  his 
long  dark  curls  hanging  down  over  his  laced  buff-coat  at 
the  gate  of  hell.  And  the  burning  marie  colors  bestow 
the  terrific  on  the  insane  bigot  Balfour  even  to  the  moment 
that  he  compels  Morton  to  hover  in  mid-air  above  the 
chasm  in  front  of  the  cave.  Morton  is  the  embodiment 
of  Scott's  loyalty  to  the  high  church.     When  threatened 


Scott's  ''Heart  of  Midlothian"  251 

with  the  frightful  death  by  the  Covenanters  Morton 
does  the  worst  thing  imaginable,  unconsciously  mumbling 
words  from  the  English  prayer-book.  He  could  be  no 
apostate  to  the  church  of  his  ancestors  by  reason  of  his 
blue-blooded  training. 

Who  can  forget  what  the  terrified  Reverend  Reuben 
Butler  saw,  as  he  glanced  over  his  shoulder  as  he  was  mak- 
ing his  way  to  the  gate  of  Edinburgh,  on  the  night  that 
the  Porteous  mob  stormed  the  old  Tolbooth,  or  who  can 
forget  the  first  appearance  of  the  aquiline-nosed,  black- 
eyed  girl  dressed  in  a  blue  riding- jacket  with  tarnished 
lace?  Her  petticoat  of  scarlet  camlet  embroidered  with 
tarnished  flowers,  and  her  Highland  bonnet,  and  a  bunch 
of  broken  feathers,  can  never  fade  from  memory.  Whether 
we  are  listening  to  her  singing  ballads  out  at  Muschat's 
Cairn  to  warn  Geordie  Robertson,  or  are  with  her  when 
she  is  near  her  father's  grave,  or  with  Jeanie  sitting  next 
to  her  in  the  church,  or  when  hoping  that  she  will  escape 
from  the  mob  that  bring  about  her  death,  we  are  compelled 
to  acknowledge  that  Madge  Wildfire  is  Scott's  pathological 
masterpiece.  Her  last  words  are  about  mercy  at  the  house 
of  the  Interpreter's  and  she  does  not  forget  to  utter 
mysterious  words  about  the  missing  child  of  EfhVs.  On 
her  deathbed  Scott  gives  to  Madge  the  wish  of  many 
years.  Mr.  Staunton  will  come  and  take  her  by  the  hand 
and  give  her  a  pomegranate,  a  piece  of  honeycomb,  and  a 
small  bottle  of  spirits  to  stay  her  fainting,  and  the  good 
times  will  come  back  again  and  she  will  be  the  happiest 
girl  one  ever  saw  in  the  bridal  bed  that  the  sexton  has  made 
in  the  kirkyard.  There  are  other  scenes  that  linger 
long  in  our  memory.  One  is  the  interview  that  Jeanie  had 
with  Effie  in  the  Tolbooth  the  day  before  the  trial.  This 
meeting  between  the  two  sisters  was  so  pathetic  that  the 
reformed  ruffian  Ratcliffe  with  the  gentleness  that  had 
something  of  reverence  in  it  partly  closed  the  shutter  in 


252  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

order  to  throw  a  veil  over  a  scene  so  sorrowful.  Nor  can 
the  great  scene  of  the  trial  of  Effie  with  the  groans  of  her 
broken-hearted  father,  who  fell  prostrate  as  the  blow  of 
the  verdict  "Guilty"  pierced  his  ears,  be  effaced.  Two 
other  scenes  also  make  us  quiver  with  pent  up  emotions. 
The  first  is  the  interview  that  Jeanie  Deans  has  with 
Queen  Caroline  in  the  gardens  with  the  Duke  of  Argyle 
standing  by.  The  pathos  of  the  Scotch  dialect  like  a 
tempered  rapier  finds  its  way  behind  the  shield  of  the 
Queen's  conventional  English  to  the  Queen's  womanly 
heart.  Thus  it  was  that  Jeanie  saved  the  life  of  her  sister 
in  spite  of  the  misgivings  of  the  Duke  of  Argyle  and  our- 
selves. The  second  is  the  last  sad  scene  in  the  novel, 
where  Sir  George  Staunton  is  shot  by  his  own  son  whom  he 
had  been  trying  for  years  to  find.  At  the  close  of  The 
Heart  of  Midlothian  (1818)  Sir  Walter  Scott,  contrary  to 
his  custom,  furnishes  an  ethical  postscript  in  the  manner 
of  Hawthorne  to  show  us  that  sin  not  only  separated  Sir 
George  Staunton  and  wife  from  their  illegitimate  child  but 
also  separated  Jeanie  and  Effie  driving  them  farther  and 
farther  apart  as  the  years  went  on. 

So  far  as  style  is  concerned  Scott  never  surpassed  the 
description  in  Rob  Roy  of  Diana  Vernon  by  moonlight 
bidding  a  seeming  eternal  farewell  to  her  lover  Frank 
Osbaldistone.  There  are  three  pages  spaced  most  admir- 
ably to  setting  and  characterizing  dialogue,  supported  on 
the  surface  of  a  rapidly  passing  wave  of  narrative.  One 
lives  a  thousand  years  in  such  a  parting;  and  one,  after 
such  a  parting,  sits  down  for  what  seems  another  thousand 
years.  Narrative  momentarily  stands  still  refusing  to 
move  because  of  its  being  engulfed  in  the  tears  of  the 
immovable,  frigid  Frank.  There  is  another  novel  even 
more  dramatic  than  the  one  that  contains  fulminating 
episodes  in  which  villain  Rashleigh,  hero  Frank,  Rob  Roy, 
and  Bailie  Jarvie  are  seen  dashing  to  and  fro,  now  in 


Scott's  ''Bride  of  Lammcrmoor"        253 

Glasgow  and  now  among  the  MacGregors  and  soldiers  in 
the  Highlands;  and  this  novel  is  The  Bride  of  Lammermoor , 
which  was  published  in  1819,  possessing  as  its  predecessor 
a  Jacobitic  enveloping  action.  It  is  a  veritable  Romeo  and 
Jidiet  which  at  times  measure?  arms  with  Hamlet,  where 
humor  and  pathos  throttle  each  other  in  Ophelia's  grave. 
Its  passion  movement  superbly  and  remorselessly  marches 
through  the  supernatural,  blood,  madness,  and  the  grave- 
yard, to  the  sands  of  the  Kelpie's  Flow  where  with  Caleb 
Balderstone  we  pick  up  the  black  feather  of  him  who  had 
been  pushed  out  of  sight  by  the  awful  pressure  of  human 
existence  at  its  worst.  The  golden-haired  Lucy  Ashton, 
who  can  sing  and  play  on  the  lute,  has  been  plucked  by 
Scott  from  the  ill-fated  throng  of  Gothic  heroines;  and 
Edgar  Ravenswood  may  have  been  suggested  to  Scott  by 
the  characterization  of  Maturin's  Milesian  chief  Connal  of 
1 812,  and  Lady  Ashton  by  Lady  Montclare,  the  brow- 
beating cruel  mother  who  sacrificed  her  daughters  Armida 
and  the  mad  Ines.  When  in  the  ruinous  tower  over- 
looking the  stormy  German  Ocean  and  the  Kelpie's  Flow 
are  seen  for  the  first  time  the  thin,  gray  hairs  and  the  sharp, 
high  features  of  Caleb  Balderstone,  we  realize  that  here  is 
the  strong  character  of  the  novel.  He  is  to  the  novel  what 
Polonius,  Rosencrantz,  Guildenstern,  Osric,  and  the  grave- 
diggers  are  to  Hamlet.  When  Caleb  comes  in  to  announce 
to  the  Ashtons  and  his  master  in  Wolfscrag  that  the 
thunder  has  destroyed  the  victuals  there  are  such  strokes 
of  decisive  humor  that  even  Ravenswood  is  forced  for  once 
and  the  only  time  to  laugh.  And  when  the  old  man  for- 
ages for  food  at  Gibbie  Girder's  the  whole  village  as  well  as 
the  reader  embraces  the  humor  of  the  situation ;  and  when, 
later,  on  hearing  that  the  Marquis  of  A —  is  to  visit  his 
master,  he  sets  fire  to  the  castle  in  order  to  conceal  the 
poverty  and  save  the  honor  of  his  house,  we  exclaim, 
"Great  is  Scott  in  consistent  characterization!"     Scott's 


254  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

servant  in  delineation  is  as  great  as  any  of  Scott's  kings. 
When  in  Ivanhoe  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  in  the  cell  of 
Copmanhurst  facing  an  outlaw  in  the  carousal  of  a  night, 
removes  his  helmet  disclosing  laughing  blue  eyes  and  flaxen 
hair  he  is  every  inch  a  king,  but  no  more  human  than  the 
kingly  servant  Caleb  Balderstone  in  The  Bride  of  Lammer- 
moor. 

There  is  only  one  figure  outside  of  the  McAulay  and 
MacGregor  banditti  that  rivets  attention  in  The  Legend 
of  Montrose  (1819)  and  that  is  the  Scotch  mercenary  sol- 
dier, Dugald  Dalgetty,  who  comes  riding  in  on  his  horse 
Gustavus.  Dalgetty  is  a  caricature  resurrection  of 
Smollett's  Lismahago.  Something  seems  to  ail  Dalgetty, 
perhaps  it  is  the  lack  of  a  woman.  Scott  should  have 
given  him  a  running  chance  with  a  woman  on  the  order  of 
Mistress  Tabitha  Bramble.  As  he  stands  alone  on  the 
pages  of  Scott's  novel  he  produces  little  laughter  from 
one  who  has  the  disputatious  Caledonian  lieutenant  of 
Smollett's  in  mind.  Dugald  Dalgetty,  however,  is  as 
strong  a  piece  of  caricature  as  Sir  Piercie  Shafton  in  The 
Monastery;  and  there  have  been  those  who  have  loved  him. 
It  is  Thackeray  who  says:  "What  if  .  .  .  Dugald  Dal- 
getty and  Ivanhoe  were  to  step  in  at  that  open  window  by 
the  little  garden  yonder?"  .  .  .  "  Amo  Major  Dalgetty. 
Delightful  Major.  To  think  of  him  is  to  desire  to  jump 
up,  run  to  the  book,  and  get  the  volume  down  from  the 
shelf."  The  moonlight  fairy  on  the  turf  called  Annot 
Lyle  is  interesting  only  at  the  moment  that  she  loses 
former  self  in  being  ascertained  as  the  lawful  daughter  of 
Sir  Duncan  Campbell  by  reason  of  a  Gothic  mark  dis- 
covered on  her  left  shoulder.  Thus  one  feels  that  Scott, 
in  1 8 19,  had  profited  little  by  any  reading  of  Eaton  Bar- 
rett's The  Heroine,  in  which  the  author  makes  fun  of  any 
bruised  gooseberry  birthmark  found  on  a  babe's  elbow. 
Also  Scott  is  ready  to  admit  in  this  bit  of  fiction  that  even 


Scott's  "Ivanhoe"  255 

a  Highlander  Allan  McAulay  can  make  a  mistake  in  the 
realm  of  second  sight  and  prophecy. 

Ivanhoe  (1820)  is  a  series  of  brilliantly  conceived  epi- 
sodes, many  of  which  are  large  and  well  colored.  In  no 
other  novel  does  Scott  furnish  us  with  so  many  panoramic 
historical  scenes,  each  of  which  seems  to  have  sprung 
Pallas-like  from  Scott's  brain  full-grown  and  already 
endowed  with  such  marvelous  objective  strength  as  to  be 
able  to  take  care  of  the  artistic  beauties  of  its  own  atmos- 
phere, motivation,  dialogue,  and  characterization.  These 
scenes  are  all  rightly  numbered,  rightly  coupled,  and  are 
on  a  carefully  constructed  track,  so  that,  when  with  watch 
in  hand  Scott  throws  open  the  throttle,  the  train  of  cars  of 
complication  arrives  on  time  for  all  characters  on  board  to 
witness  the  demolition  of  Torquilstone  Castle.  There  is  a 
proper  subordination  throughout  the  novel  of  subsidiary 
episodes.  Minor  coincident  actions  are  allowed  to  gain 
such  ascendancy  that  it  seems  as  if  the  main  action  had 
been  stopped,  but  it  has  been  going  on  all  the  while.  The 
omniscient  eyes  of  Scott  are  fixed  upon  four  couples  who 
are  situated  in  different  parts  of  Torquilstone  Castle.  We 
listen  to  the  fiery  utterances  of  Cedric  and  the  replies  of 
sluggish  Athelstane.  We  descend  into  the  dungeon  where 
we  see  Isaac  of  York  confronted  with  Front-de-Bceuf .  We 
follow  Scott  to  the  apartment  where  the  fair  Rowena  is 
being  wooed  by  De  Bracy;  and  then  we  are  transferred 
to  where  Rebecca  is  standing  upon  the  parapet  bidding 
defiance  to  the  threatening  Knight  Templar.  All  these 
incidents  have  been  going  on  at  the  same  time ;  and  from 
the  angle  point  of  view,  where  we  have  our  eyes  fixed  upon 
all  of  them,  our  ears  hear  one  bugle  blast  which  calls  the 
curtain  to  fall  on  all  the  four  scenes.  Four  chapters  have 
been  employed  by  Scott  wherein  to  stage  the  four  minor 
coincident  actions.  The  bugle  blast  is  to  tell  us  that  the 
main  action  that  has  been  going  on  seemingly  without  our 


256  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

knowledge  must  absorb  from  now  on  our  whole  attention. 
From  the  internal-angle  point  of  view  Scott  bids  us  en- 
sconce ourselves  behind  Rebecca's  shield  so  that  we  can 
see  the  main  action,  and  listen  to  its  interpretation  as  the 
convalescent  Ivanhoe  speaks  when  Rebecca  fails  to  com- 
prehend all  its  dubious  movements.  Then  Scott  picks  us 
up  and  carries  us  through  the  air  to  place  us  in  front  of 
the  castle  to  secure  a  splendid  external-angle  point  of  view 
from  which  to  watch  Locksley  shoot  his  cloth-yard  arrow, 
which  would  have  killed  De  Bracy  on  the  battlements  had 
it  not  been  for  the  accursed  Spanish  mail  beneath  his 
armor,  and  to  clap  our  hands  with  glee  as  we  see  flames 
shooting  upwards  from  Norman  turrets.  When  will 
come  another  Scott  to  give  us  the  tournaments  of  Ashby- 
de-la-Zouche,  a  Robin  Hood  splitting  the  wand,  a  Gurth 
cheating  Isaac  of  York,  a  king  and  a  friar  outlaw  eating 
and  drinking  in  the  cell  of  Copmanhurst,  such  a  frightful 
death  as  Ulrica  gave  to  Front-de-Bceuf ,  bidding  him  as  the 
flames  and  smoke  creep  around  to  be  of  good  cheer,  because 
this  which  he  was  now  enduring  was  but  a  foretaste  of  that 
agony  which  they  would  both  enjoy  together  in  a  spiritual 
hell,  and  a  Brian  de  Bois-Guilbert  dying  by  the  excess  of 
his  own  conflicting  passions  in  the  lists  of  Templestowe? 
The  atmosphere  of  The  Monastery  (1820)  is  darkened  in 
the  Melrose  Abbey  district  not  only  by  the  shadows  of 
churchmen  but  by  the  forms  of  marauders  and  robber 
chieftains  on  the  order  of  Julian  Avenel,  whom  we  see  after 
he  has  seized  the  castle  of  his  sister-in-law's  as  he  stands 
therein  hand-fasted  to  a  beautiful  maiden  called  Kate. 
Modified  Protestantism  is  swaying  for  mastery  with 
compromising  Catholicism;  and  decaying  monks  seem  to 
realize  that  they  are  losing  their  power.  Halbert  Glen- 
dinning  is  permitted  to  win  Mary  Avenel  largely  because 
he  is  a  knight-errant  of  militant  Protestantism  and  his  bro- 
ther Edward  loses  gracefully  because  of  the  solacing  pull 


Scott's  "The  Monastery"  257 

of  monastic  life.  Scott  under  the  influence  of  Fouque's 
Undine  created  the  White  Lady  of  Avenel  who  wields  her 
power  over  earth,  air,  fire,  and  water.  This  supernatural 
creature  in  a  constant  recurrence  of  panoramic  slides 
works  in  beneficent  action  for  the  welfare  of  Glendinning 
and  Mary  Avenel;  and  at  the  end  of  The  Abbot  (1820), 
which  is  a  sequel  to  The  Monastery,  Scott  reminds  us  that 
the  White  Lady  has  succeeded  in  binding  up  the  wounds 
of  the  two  houses  and  the  two  combatant  religions  in  the 
balsam  bandage  of  the  marriage  of  young  Roland  Graeme 
to  Catherine  Seyton.  Sir  Piercie  Shafton,  prior  to  fight- 
ing the  duel  with  Halbert,  is  an  excellent  caricature  of 
Lyly's  Euphues,  but  becomes  a  most  vitalized  Elizabethan 
knight  as  soon  as  he  gazes  upon  the  bodkin,  which  re- 
veals to  the  reader  that  his  ancestors  were  tailors,  and 
thereafter  flings  from  his  mouth  a  proper  modification  of 
the  enchanting  harmony  of  vain  conceits. 

The  description  of  Julian  Avenel's  castle,  jutting  out 
into  the  mountain  lake  and  approached  by  a  causeway 
and  drawbridge,  is  one  of  the  best  things  in  The  Monastery; 
and  there  is  a  repetition  of  this  scenery  in  The  Abbot, 
because  it  is  in  this  castle  that  the  childless  wife  of  Halbert 
Glendinning  adopts  Roland  Graeme  after  he  has  been 
rescued  by  the  dog  from  the  lake.  After  some  years  this 
young  Roland  rescues  Seyton  on  the  streets  of  Edinburgh 
from  the  banditti  noblemen  and  is  selected  by  the  unsuspi- 
cious Earl  of  Murray  to  go  in  the  cause  of  Protestantism  to 
Lochleven  Castle  to  watch  and  to  serve  Queen  Mary.  It 
is  here  that  Scott  furnishes  us  the  scene  of  the  forced 
abdication.  It  is  one  of  Scott's  best  strokes  where  the 
brown-haired,  hazel-eyed  Mary  holds  extended  her  beauti- 
ful arm  whereon  are  seen  the  black  and  blue  marks  of 
Lindesay's  gauntlet.  Then  there  is  the  successful  escape 
of  Mary  to  the  mainland  to  the  Seytons  and  Hamiltons 
who  unfurl  her  banner  at  Langside.  It  is  here  that  Mary 
17 


258  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

ruins  all  that  she  loves;  and  over  the  body  of  handsome 
George  Douglas  she  recognizes  her  own  basilisk  power. 
Throughout  the  novel  there  is  a  fine  portrayal  of  the 
kindlier  side  of  the  Earl  of  Murray  among  whose  retain- 
ers is  Halbert  Glendinning.  We  enter  Holyrood  and  see 
Rizzio's  blood  spot  on  the  floor.  There  is  everywhere  the 
glamour  of  the  failure  of  intrigues  carried  on  by  Gothic 
methods  in  palace  and  monastery.  Mary  Stuart  could 
not  get  her  throne  of  Scotland  back  any  more  than  Ed- 
ward Glendinning  could  hold  a  Mary  Avenel  because  the 
cloister  was  not  winning  its  way  in  London  and  Edinburgh. 
Beautiful,  tantalizing  Catherine  Seyton  for  a  while  kept 
secrets  from  her  lover  and  made  him  jealous  of  an  impos- 
sible rival  just  as  Di  Vernon  in  Rob  Roy.  But  she  is  a  help- 
ful girl  just  as  Margaret  Ramsay  in  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel. 
Indeed  all  of  Scott's  women,  even  the  aged  ones,  help  the 
men  they  like  as  Margaret  Trapbois  aided  Nigel.  Very 
few  of  Scott's  women  are  not  on  the  firing  line  when  the 
situation  is  life  or  death  for  the  man  loved.  Fenella  in 
Peveril  of  the  Peak  penetrates  to  the  centre  of  the  Newgate 
web  to  see  Julian  and  be  with  him  though  she  knows  his 
heart  is  Alice  Bridgenorth's.  Women  do  not  desert  their 
lovers  in  Scott  unless  they  have  been  deserted  without 
cause;  and,  if  they  have  a  cause  for  action  against  those 
who  have  abandoned  them,  they  cling  close  and  long 
to  climb  to  vengeance.  Meg  Murdockson  avenged  her 
daughter  Madge  Wildfire  by  killing  Sir  George  Staunton 
through  the  agency  of  his  own  boy. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  is  at  his  best  perhaps  when  portraying 
great  historical  characters  at  the  climaxes  of  their  careers. 
In  this  respect  Kenilworth  (1821)  in  one  scene  rises  to  a 
splendid  height  in  the  dramatic  and  analytic  presentation 
of  enraged  Elizabeth  denouncing  the  Earl  of  Leicester. 
The  emotional  situation  contains  qualities  transmitted 
from  Ravenswood's  denunciation  of  Lucy  Ashton  and 


Scott's  "The  Pirate"  259 

Meg's  anathemas  hurled  at  the  head  of  the  Laird  of 
Ellangowan.  Besides  the  graphic  description  of  the  pa- 
thetic death  of  Amy  Robsart  the  reader  fails  to  find  else- 
where anything  that  makes  Kenilworth  an  extraordinary 
masterpiece.  The  Pirate  (1822)  is  somewhat  disappoint- 
ing in  spite  of  the  attractiveness  of  the  melancholy  Minna, 
the  blithe  Brenda,  and  Noma  of  the  Fitful  Head,  who,  as 
a  Meg  Merrilies  on  the  Orkney  Islands,  is  a  magnificent 
queen  of  the  elements.  If  Scott  had  told  the  story  of  old 
Vaughan's  life  in  Hispaniola,  Tortuga,  and  Port  Royal, 
The  Pirate  would  have  been  a  narrative  of  two  pirates  in 
action  on  the  high  seas,  and  not  a  study  of  them  ashore, 
the  father  in  remorse,  and  the  son  so  reformed  as  finally 
to  be  accepted  in  the  British  naval  service.  If  Scott  had 
begun  the  novel  by  enlarging  on  the  data  that  he  supplies 
at  the  end,  it  would  undoubtedly  have  been  a  greater  piece 
of  work  than  Charles  Kingsley's  Westward  Ho!  or  Steven- 
son's Treasure  Island. 

Banditti  once  more  surround  us  in  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel 
(1822).  Apprentices  whack  us  with  their  clubs  in  the 
opening  chapters  and  bravoes  pursue  us  with  knives  in 
Alsatia,  a  resort  of  debtors  and  criminals  in  London. 
The  murder  of  the  old  miser  Trapbois  by  the  Alsatian 
ruffians  to  get  the  sign  manual  belonging  to  Nigel,  who  by 
it  only  could  secure  his  manorial  rights  in  Scotland,  has 
been  magnificently  managed  in  the  Gothic  style  even  to 
Nigel's  reading  of  God's  Revenge  Against  Murther,  prior 
to  the  shrieks  issuing  from  the  sleeping  apartment  of  the 
old  man  to  whose  rescue  Nigel  goes  by  the  secret  passage- 
way. In  the  moonlight  there  follows  a  fine  piece  of 
pistol  and  rapier  action  with  the  daughter  of  the  usurer  as  a 
witness  who  rewards  Nigel  for  his  victory  by  giving  over 
into  his  keeping  her  father's  heavy  chest  of  ducats.  At 
intervals  throughout  the  narrative  we  glimpse  at  the 
excellent  portrait  of  toddling,  doddering  James  I  talking 


260  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  dialect,  ever  manifesting  some  trait  of  hereditary- 
cowardice;  and  we  peer  into  the  Tower  of  London  to  see 
Margaret  Ramsay,  attired  as  a  boy,  a  lover  of  Nigel  when 
he  is  at  the  lowest  ebb  of  his  fortune.  Lord  Dalgarno  in 
his  amour  with  the  wife  of  honest  Christie  is  in  keeping 
with  the  purpose  of  Scott  to  show  us  the  condition  of  the 
dissolute  court. 

When  we  are  not  in  Derbyshire  or  on  the  Isle  of  Man  in 
The  Peveril  of  the  Peak  (1822)  we  are  in  the  apartment  of 
Charles  II,  or  in  the  penetralia  of  Newgate,  or  entering 
the  Traitor's  Gate  to  occupy  a  dungeon  in  the  Tower. 
The  enveloping  action  is  the  Popish  Plot.  Fenella 
(Zarah) ,  daughter  of  the  villain  Christian,  who  hopelessly 
loves  Julian  Peveril  and  plays  the  mute  to  gain  her  ends  is 
modeled  after  Mignon  in  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister.  In 
London  of  the  Restoration,  when  Alice  Bridgenorth  is 
exposed  to  the  advances  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  in  the 
King's  apartments  and  throws  herself  on  the  mercy  of 
Charles  II,  we  are  surprised  that  she  emerges  from  the 
banditti  of  the  seraglio  with  her  virtue  intact. 

Young  America  nowadays  is  more  or  less  required  to 
make  a  study  of  the  wily  Louis  XI  and  the  impetuous 
Charles  of  Burgundy  and  shake  hands  with  all  the  iniquit- 
ous barons  and  vavasours  filling  the  courts  of  the  two, 
but  young  America  can  never  come  away  from  Louis  XI 
in  the  novel  with  the  feeling  that  he  has  been  enthralled  by 
the  real  Sir  Walter.  And  I  think  that  those  of  us  who  are 
older,  if  we  would  but  confess  our  true  feelings,  would 
admit  that  the  only  place  in  Quentin  Durward  (1823)  where 
Scott  is  writing  in  his  warm,  comfortable  style  is  in  the 
opening  pages  which,  it  will  be  recalled,  are  devoted  to 
just  how  one  Scotchman  can  rescue  another  Scotchman 
under  the  dismal  corpse-sprinkled  trees  in  front  of  the 
castle  of  Plessis-les-Tours.  Still,  if  one  is  susceptible  as 
young  America  always  is  to  the  exuberant  rush  and  sweep 


Scott's  "St.  Ronan's  Well"  261 

of  heroic  action  in  historical  melodrama  on  foreign  soil, 
where  Scott  seems  always  weak  because  bereft  of  his 
happy-at-home  feeling  of  certainty  and  strength,  one  can 
readily  fall  into  the  fervor  of  the  praise  of  Thackeray  who 
says,  "Amo  Quentin  Durward,  and  specially  Quentin's 
uncle,  who  brought  the  Boar  to  bay.  I  forget  the  gentle- 
man's name." 

St.  Ronan's  Well  (1824)  was  written  as  Scott  said, 
"  Celebrare  domestica  facta."  Scott  thought  that  he  would 
make  a  trial  at  such  fiction  as  had  been  produced  by 
Frances  Burney,  Charlotte  Smith,  Maria  Edgeworth, 
Jane  Austen,  and  Susan  E.  Ferrier.  He  created  a  Spa 
and  a  Cleikum  Inn,  with  an  excellent  low  comedy  char- 
acter the  virago  Meg  Dods  as  its  keeperess.  The  fashion- 
able figures  who  frequented  this  health  resort  are  Clara 
Mowbray,  Mr.  Mowbray  her  brother,  Francis  Tyrrel  her 
lover,  and  Lord  Ethrington,  the  gambler  and  impostor, 
who  tries  to  force  a  marriage  with  Clara.  We  undoubtedly 
see  in  the  novel  plain  traces  of  Smollett,  Frances  Burney, 
and  Jane  Austen,  but  in  spite  of  the  help  afforded  by  his 
great  predecessors  the  book  fell  flat,  especially  on  the 
southern  side  of  the  Tweed.  Scott  confessed  that  he  was 
a  failure  when  it  came  to  shooting  folly  as  it  flies.  In  the 
original  draft  of  the  plot  Scott  had  Hannah  Irwin  confess 
to  success  in  having  made  Bulmer  marry  Clara  to  find  out 
that  he  had  gained  nothing  but  his  brother's  paramour. 
Scott  had  arranged  it  so  that  Tyrrel  was  to  have  been 
Clara's  seducer  and  that  Bulmer,  Tyrrel's  brother,  was  not 
to  know  what  he  so  readily  asseverated  until  after  marry- 
ing Clara.  James  Ballantyne  made  Scott  keep  Clara 
virtuous  prior  to  marriage  because  of  her  silk  petticoat. 
Scott  held  out  for  a  time  claiming  that  what  could  occur  to 
a  girl  in  gingham  could  happen  to  a  girl  in  silk,  but  finally 
yielded  to  his  publisher's  injunction  thus  perplexing  the 
narrative  of  the  novel  and  weakening  its  denouement. 


262  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Redganntlet  (1824)  suffers  by  reason  of  the  methodi- 
zation  employed  in  relating  the  narrative  which  is  chroni- 
cled by  two  letter  writers  who  are  the  agents  of  the  action. 
The  novel,  however,  will  always  be  treasured  for  the  sake 
of  Wandering  Willie's  tale  about  Steenie  and  Sir  Robert 
Redgauntlet,  for  imminent  death  always  stalking  on  the 
Solway  Sands,  for  the  amount  of  music  Wandering  Willie 
can  get  out  of  his  fiddle  and  the  snatches  of  the  old  ballads 
he  sings,  and  for  the  affecting  conclusion  in  which  one  sees 
Charles  the  Pretender  leaving  England's  shores  forever 
and  a  Jacobite  cause  behind  which  is  no  longer  a  cause  but 
only  a  name.  The  Betrothed  (1825) ,  though  in  parts  weak, 
as  a  whole  is  redeemed  by  the  wonderful  way  in  which 
Scott  has  conjured  into  being  the  bahr-geist  of  the  mur- 
dered Vanda.  Because  of  adverse  criticism  meted  out  to 
him  on  this  tale  of  the  Crusaders  which  turned  out  to  be  a 
tale  of  Welsh  banditti,  Scott  with  some  reluctance  about 
invading  the  orient  that  had  been  accurately  used  as 
a  background  in  Hope's  Anastasius  (18 19)  and  James 
Morier's  Hajji  Baba  (1824)  carried  the  plot  of  his  next 
novel  all  the  way  to  the  mysterious  East  and  called  it  The 
Talisman  (1825)  which  is  indeed  a  tale  of  the  Crusaders. 
It  sinks  in  comparison  with  Ivanhoe  yet  here  and  there 
rises  to  a  great  height  of  descriptive  power  as  in  the  open- 
ing chapter  in  which  is  the  spirited  fight  between  Sir 
Kenneth  and  Saladin  on  the  sands  near  the  Dead  Sea. 

Woodstock  (1826)  was  being  written  by  Scott  when 
Smith's  Brambletye  House  came  out.  Scott  went  on  writ- 
ing studiously  avoiding  the  new  book  lest  his  own  territory 
might  by  the  perusal  of  it  be  made  somewhat  similar  to 
that  of  Horace  Smith's.  Both  novels  cover  somewhat  the 
same  period  of  English  history  and  are  excellent.  In 
Woodstock  Scott  follows  the  fortunes  of  Charles  Stuart 
from  the  battle  of  Worcester  to  the  restoration  of  him  as 
Charles  II  in  1660.     In  the  romance  there  are  interesting 


Scott's  "Woodstock"  263 

passages  such  as  those  containing  the  supernatural  tricks 
played  in  the  ruined  castle.  The  attempted  assassination 
of  Oliver  Cromwell  stands  out ;  and  such  characters  as  the 
irascible  old  Sir  Henry  Lee,  his  sweet  daughter  Alice,  and 
the  noble  Markham  Everard,  refuse  to  be  blotted  out  on 
memory's  page.  Old  Sir  Henry,  as  if  through  a  horn, 
blows  such  fiery  blasts  as  to  cause  from  the  Waverley 
Novels  a  hurried  entrance  of  his  predecessors,  the  peppery 
old  people,  such  as  Baron  Bradwardine  from  Waverley, 
Lady  Bellenden  from  Old  Mortality,  Cedric  from  Ivanhoe, 
and  Sir  Geoffrey  from  The  Peveril  of  the  Peak.  And 
unforgettable,  too,  is  The  Surgeon's  Daughter  (1827)  which 
seems  to  have  been  written  by  Scott  to  show  that  he  could 
go  farther  east  than  Palestine  to  get  a  new  background 
for  banditti;  and  since  'there  was  as  much  shooting  and 
stabbing  in  India  as  in  the  Highlands'  of  Scotland,  Scott 
sent  his  muse  of  fiction  to  the  land  of  Clive  to  Mysore,  to 
watch  the  movements  of  Hyder  Ali,  and  Tippoo,  and  the 
heroine  Menie  Gray  as  Hartley  saves  her  from  the  machi- 
nations of  Richard  Middlemas. 

From  the  smouldering  fire  of  Scott's  genius  there  shot 
forth  one  flame  before  it  was  extinguished  which  revealed 
a  beautiful  "landscape  lying  in  the  lap  of  terror."  The 
Fair  Maid  of  Perth  (1828)  is  the  story  of  how  Catharine 
Glover  saved  herself  from  the  Duke  of  Rothsay,  the  son  of 
Robert  III,  and  how  she  did  her  best  to  save  her  would-be 
ravisher  from  being  murdered  by  Ramorney  in  Falkland, 
and  how  afterwards  she  called  Douglas  to  the  castle  to 
hang  the  assassins.  Henry  Gow  and  Conachar  as  wooers 
of  Catharine  are  exceedingly  well  delineated,  especially 
Conachar  who,  afterwards  as  Eachin  the  Highland  Chief 
in  the  big  fight  between  the  two  clans,  seeing  that  his  own 
was  being  exterminated  by  reason  of  his  own  cowardice, 
committed  suicide.  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth  is  Scott's 
last  powerful  glance  at  Highland  kilts.     In  Anne  of  Geier- 


264  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

stein  (1829),  in  Count  Robert  of  Paris  (1831),  and  in  Castle 
Dangerous  (1 831),  we  hear  the  swish  of  the  waters  lapping 
the  sides  of  an  English  man-of-war  which  was  to  carry 
the  mentally  paralyzed  great  Sir  Walter  to  Naples,  and 
from  activity  in  the  field  of  fiction  forever. 

Scott  was  somewhat  indebted  to  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and 
Maria  Edge  worth,  as  has  been  shown ;  but  the  true  Scott 
touches,  as  manifested  in  Bertram's  home-coming  in  Guy 
Mannering  and  in  Darsie's  dialogue  carried  on  by  means 
of  the  answering  notes  of  Wandering  Willie's  fiddle,  were 
inspired  by  no  predecessor,  and  no  successor  has  ever 
caught  the  power  of  imitating  such  inimitable  outbursts  of 
genius.  The  only  novelists  who  have  succeeded  in 
approaching  the  great  Sir  Walter  in  such  a  white  heat  of 
inspiration  have  been  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  in  certain 
balladized  passages  in  Kidnapped  and  The  Master  of 
Ballantrae,  and  Sir  Gilbert  Parker  in  The  Seats  of  the 
Mighty  and  in  that  strangely  poetic  account  in  When 
Valmond  Came  to  Pontiac,  which  presents  a  man,  the 
illegitimate  son  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  impersonating 
himself  not  only  in  his  life  but  most  of  all  in  the  manner 
of  his  death. 

Scott  measured  his  ordinary  flights  in  fiction  most 
accurately  when,  in  The  Quarterly,  January,  181 7,  after 
commenting  on  flimsiness,  incoherence,  lack  of  reader's 
interest  in  insipid  young  heroes,  prevalent  in  Waverley, 
Guy  Mannering,  and  The  Antiquary,  he  had  this  to  say 
about  his  own  defective  Waverley: 

His  chief  characters  are  never  actors,  but  always  acted  upon 
by  the  spur  of  circumstances,  and  have  their  fates  uniformly 
determined  by  the  agency  of  the  subordinate  persons.  .  .  .  The 
insipidity  of  this  author's  heroes  may  be  also  in  part  referred 
to  the  readiness  with  which  he  twists  and  turns  his  story  to 
produce  some  immediate  and  perhaps  temporary  effect.     This 


Peacock's  "Maid  Marian"  265 

could  hardly  be  done  without  representing  the  principal  char- 
acter either  as  inconsistent  or  flexible  in  his  principles.  The 
ease  with  which  Waverley  adopts,  and  afterwards  forsakes, 
the  Jacobite  party  in  1745  is  a  good  example  of  what  we  mean. 
Had  he  been  painted  as  a  steady  character,  his  conduct  would 
have  been  improbable.  The  author  was  aware  of  this;  and 
yet,  unwilling  to  relinquish  an  opportunity  of  introducing  the 
interior  of  the  Chevalier's  military  court,  the  circumstances  of 
the  battle  of  Preston-pans,  and  so  forth,  he  hesitates  not  to 
sacrifice  poor  Waverley,  and  to  represent  him  as  a  reed  blown 
about  at  the  pleasure  of  every  breeze.  A  less  careless  writer 
would  probably  have  taken  some  pains  to  gain  the  end  pro- 
posed in  a  more  artful  and  ingenious  manner.  But  our  author 
was  hasty,  and  has  paid  the  penalty  of  his  haste. 

In  conclusion,  in  spite  of  Scott's  faults,  the  greatest  of 
which  is  perhaps  incoherence  or  inconsistency  of  char- 
acterization, we  must  quite  agree  with  what  Gifford,  the 
editor  of  The  Quarterly,  to  improve  Scott's  anonymous 
review  of  his  own  novels,  put  into  Scott's  own  mouth: 
"The  characters  of  Shakespeare  are  not  more  exclu- 
sively human,  not  more  perfect  men  and  women  as 
they  live  and  move,  than  are  those  of  this  mysterious 
author." 

Two  years  after  Scott's  Ivanhoe  was  published,  Thomas 
Love  Peacock,  in  spite  of  being  inimical  to  Scott's  fiction, 
because,  as  he  said,  it  was  written  in  a  dialect  the  worst  in 
the  world  and  in  a  phrasal  power  sustaining  nothing  quot- 
able, published  the  comic  romance  Maid  Marian  (1822), 
(written  in  18 18),  in  which  is  the  figure  of  Friar  Tuck 
continuing  his  delightful  existence  as  Father  Michael. 
The  initial,  medial,  and  terminal  mass  slides,  used  to  push 
tall  Father  Michael  to  the  centre  of  action,  make  the 
militant  churchman  fully  the  equal  of  Scott's  animated 
rotundity  of  herculean  humor.  Peacock  strolled  into 
Gothic  castles  and  Sherwood  Forest  as  did  Scott;  and, 


266  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

when  under  Robin  Hood's  trees,  he  was  inspired  to  such 
original  outbursts  of  balladry  as: 

For  the  slender  beech  and  the  sapling  oak 

That  grow  by  the  shadowy  rill, 
You  may  cut  down  both  at  a  single  stroke, 

You  ma}''  cut  down  which  you  will. 

But  this  you  must  know,  that  as  long  as  they  grow, 

Whatever  change  may  be, 
You  never  can  teach  either  oak  or  beech, 

To  be  aught  but  a  greenwood  tree. 

Maid  Marian,  however,  is  not  quite  a  typical  romance  of 
Peacock's;  for  in  his  other  novels  upon  entering  Gothic 
castles  we  find  Greek  furnishings.  Classicism  in  Maid 
Marian  is  lacking  unless  one  considers  himself  Greek 
enough  to  be  "rich  in  the  simple  worship  of  a  day"  in 
Sherwood  Forest,  against  the  trees  of  which  satirical, 
Peacockian  arrows  are  always  seen  glancing. 

When  in  the  novels  written  by  Peacock  before  and  after 
Maid  Marian  we  cut  the  knot  of  reticular  envelopment 
of  eighteenth  century  classicism  and  nineteenth  century 
romanticism,  an  odd  fish  flounders  therefrom  by  the  name 
of  Mr.  Toobad  of  Nightmare  Abbey  (1818).  Mr.  Toobad 
and  his  devil  dominating  nineteenth  century  society  are 
Thomas  Love  Peacock  and  his  laughable  Mumbo  Jumbo 
scaring  the  whole  family  with  a  boy's  delight.  In  1837 
Peacock  wrote:  "  the  great  principle  of  the  Right  of  Might 
is  as  flourishing  now  as  in  the  days  of  Maid  Marian :  the 
array  of  false  pretentions,  moral,  political,  and  literary  is 
as  imposing  as  ever. "  To  the  end  of  his  long  life  covering 
three  generations  Peacock  was  a  mentally  modified  Mr. 
Toobad  who  could  see  "the  little  more"  classicism  in  Mr. 
Asterias  and  "the  little  less"  romanticism  in  Mr.  Aster- 
ias's  mermaid.     What  could  be  expected  of  a  century  that 


Peacock's  "Melincourt"  267 

had  knelt  in  the  dust  to  do  reverence  to  Mr.  Cypress,  Mr. 
Sackbut,  Mr.  Paperstamp,  Mr.  Mystic,  Mr.  Anyside 
Antijack,  and  Lord  Michin  Malicho  (Lord  John  Russell) ! 

Peacock  was  Shelley's  friend  in  North  Wales  and  at 
Marlow  and  was  writing  poetry  and  fiction  in  the  days 
of  Byron,  Keats,  Wordsworth,  and  Coleridge.  As  Byron 
began  his  poetic  career  by  English  Bards  and  Scotch 
Reviewers  so  Peacock  began  his  fiction  by  flinging  it  into 
the  form  of  satire.  He  trounced  Southey  as  Nightshade  in 
Headlong  Hall  (1816)  and  in  the  same  volume  attacked  The 
Quarterly  by  chiseling  the  critic  Giflord  as  Gall,  and  con- 
tinued his  wormwood  work  in  the  long  and  tedious  Melin- 
court or  Sir  Or  an  Haut-Ton  (18 17).  In  this  burlesque 
Giflord  appears  as  Mr.  Vamp,  Southey  as  Mr.  Feather- 
nest,  Wordsworth  as  Mr.  Paperstamp,  and  Canning  as 
Mr.  Anyside  Antijack.  Perhaps  the  most  delightful  part 
of  the  satirical  allegory  is  where,  after  going  over  the 
Ocean  of  Deceitful  Form  to  the  Isle  of  Pure  Intelligence, 
with  Mr.  Mystic  (Coleridge)  we  go  through  a  fog  thicker 
than  that  which  encompassed  the  Ancient  Mariner  to  enter 
Cimmerian  Lodge  to  be  nearly  killed  by  the  metaphysical 
explosion  of  the  smoke  of  Mr.  Mystic's  transcendental 
triad, — mystery,  jargon,  and  superstition.  The  gallant 
hero  who  puts  out  the  fire  to  effect  our  rescue  is  primitive 
man,  Sir  Oran  Haut-Ton,  Bart.  The  reader  afterwards 
perchance  lingers  at  Mainchance  Villa  to  watch  the  dance 
of  the  political  mannikins  who  sing,  "We'll  all  have  a 
finger  in  the  Christmas  Pie."  What  little  plot  there  is  in 
the  novel  centres  around  Anthelia  Melincourt,  ensconced 
in  a  Peter  Pan  Land  of  the  Lake  District,  who  is  at  times 
violently  threatened  with  Richardsonian  kidnappings, 
from  which  Mr.  Forester  the  enthusiastic  emancipator 
always  succeeds  in  rescuing  her. 

In  1818,  when  Frankenstein  of  Mrs.  Shelley's  was 
published,  Nightmare  Abbey  was  issued  to  lay  the  ghost  (a 


268  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


t>j 


bloody-turbaned  one)  of  Cimmerian  Lodge,  of  Melincourt, 
in  which  Mr.  Mystic  (Coleridge)  had  floated  in  the  explo- 
sive fog  of  his  own  smoke,  and  to  help  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley 
exorcise  himself  from  the  phantoms  and  "chimaeras  dire" 
of  his  illusory  world.  In  Nightmare  Abbey  Ferdinando 
Flosky  (Coleridge)  is  belittled,  Mr.  Sackbut  (Southey)  is 
allusively  derided,  and  Cypress  (Byron)  is  diatribed  as 
basely  deserting  England.  The  denouement  of  the  novel 
is  the  scene  where  the  two-hearted  Scythrop  receives  dual 
exposure  and  a  dual  checkmate.  When  Celinda  his  air 
castle-building  affinity  says,  "He  is  not  my  choice,  Sir. 
This  lady  has  a  prior  claim;  I  renounce  him,"  to  which 
frivolous  Marionetta  his  exoterical  affinity  adds,  "And  I 
renounce  him, "  we  laugh  so  much  that  we  feel  that  surely 
here  is  the  top-notch  work  of  all  that  Peacock  dramatically 
attempted  in  comic  romance.  This  caricature  of  Shelley 
(Scythrop)  was  keenly  enjoyed  by  Shelley  who  along 
with  his  friend  Peacock  laughed  at  Scythrop,  since  this 
external  and  internal  portraiture  was  kindly  meant  as  a 
means  by  which  restored  respectability  to  sanity  could  be 
effected.  It  will  be  recalled  that  Peacock  made  Scythrop 
refuse  the  pistol  extended  by  Raven  and  choose  the  glass  of 
sparkling  Madeira. 

This  esoterical,  exoterical  Shelleyan-brained  Scythrop 
with  erratic  gesticulations  and  wild  enthusiasms  in  1844 
re-appeared  in  Disraeli's  Coningsby  as  Lucian  Gay  (Theo- 
dore Hook) .  The  most  of  us  are  well  acquainted  with  the 
peculiarities  of  the  poet  Shelley;  but  those  of  the  man, 
who  from  1823-25  was  in  custody  because  of  "a  little 
disorder  in  the  chest,"  have  been  forgotten.  Theodore 
Hook  was  at  one  time  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
conversationalists,  musicians,  and  wits  in  London.  Per- 
haps no  other  literary  lounger  knew  so  well  the  social  life 
of  Englishmen  under  George  IV ;  and  his  light  skits  in  the 
drama,  opera,  and  fiction  made  him  in  a  certain  sense  a 


Peacock,  Disraeli,  Dickens  269 

literary  lion  to  all  young  men  coming  up  to  London.  If  it 
had  not  been  for  Hook's  Kekewich,  would  Charles  Dickens 
have  been  able  to  give  the  world  an  Alfred  Jingle  ?  If  it  had 
not  been  for  Mrs.  Fuggleston, would  Mr.  Pickwick  have  had 
the  exquisite  pleasure  of  holding  Mrs.  Bardell  for  some  time 
in  his  arms?  If  there  had  been  no  Devil  Daly  in  the  same 
room  with  the  sleeping  woman,  perhaps  Pickwick  would  not 
have  been  appalled  by  the  execrable  shape  of  the  middle- 
aged  lady  in  his  bedroom.  If  Hook  in  Gilbert  Gurney 
(1835)  had  not  portrayed  the  farce  of  trials  in  the  Old 
Bailey,  would  Dickens  in  1836-37  have  had  strength 
enough  to  delineate  Bardell  versus  Pickwick,  or  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  Chancery  officials  in  Bleak  House  (1853)? 
If  the  swearing,  bacchanalian  "  I-told-you-so "  Reverend 
Wells  and  his  wife  had  not  come  in  upon  Gilbert  Gurney 
as,  under  the  influence  of  Wells's  whiskey,  he  was  sealing 
the  preliminaries  of  a  proposal  on  the  lips  of  Harriet  Wells, 
whose  head  was  on  his  shoulder,  and  was  saying,  "Your 
father  is  mistaken,  you  will  not — I  know  you  will  not 
accept  me!"  perhaps  the  good  club-friends  of  Pickwick 
when  they  stumbled  into  his  apartment  would  not  have 
been  embarrassed  by  the  heaving,  heavy  scene  that  met 
their  eyes. 

According  to  Disraeli,  Lucian  Gay  is  portrayed  as  the 
President  of  the  Grumpy  Club  who  could  sing,  speak,  and 
indulge  in  the  art  of  parliamentary  debate,  who 

was  inimitable  in  mimicry,  being  able  to  pass  from  the  or- 
dinary man  he  was  to  the  genius  when  he  portrayed  the  full 
mastery  over  the  style  and  intellect  of  all  the  speakers  in  both 
houses  of  Parliament.  Gay  could  on  such  occasions  treat  a 
heavy  subject  with  all  the  volatility  of  a  Lord  Palmerston. 
When  under  influence  of  toddy  his  ebullitions  were  flashes  of 
genius;  and  he  could  dance  a  Tarantella  like  a  Lazzaroni  and 
execute  a  Cracovienne  with  all  the  mincing  graces  of  an  opera 
heroine. 


270  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

In  Thackeray's  Pendennis  (1848-50),  Mr.Wagg  (Theodore 
Hook)  likes  Beauty,  Burgundy,  Venus,  and  Venison, 
above  all  stale  jokes.  According  to  Thackeray,  Mr.  Wagg 
seized  on  minutice  in  spite  of  himself.  With  tongue  in 
jowl  he  always  leered  at  his  companion.  Possessed  with  a 
soul  of  a  butler  he  made  fun  in  the  drawing-room.  Any 
volume  of  his  droll  books  was  worth  £300  to  any  publisher. 
He  paraded  in  a  white  waistcoat.  He  had  a  burly,  red 
face  and  a  mouth  on  the  lookout  for  florid,  Gothic  styles 
of  repasts.  He  could  insolently  push  a  pun  to  putridity 
and  familiarly  pound  a  tattoo  on  any  man's  backbone. 
Such  was  Wagg,  one  of  the  rulers  of  Paternoster  Row, 
who  condescended  to  look  favorably  on  young  reviewer 
Pendennis. 

By  the  time  Scythrop  had  passed  through  the  Gay  and 
Wagg  stage  he  was  destined  to  be  the  large  caricature 
Harold  Skimpole  (Leigh  Hunt)  in  Dickens's  Bleak  House 
(1853).  Skimpole  was  such  a  powerful  caricature  of 
Leigh  Hunt,  sponging  off  his  friends,  that  Dickens  could 
never  quite  forgive  himself  for  having  tossed  out  into  the 
world  for  all  time  as  a  figure  of  scorn  the  tag-priced  poet 
bristling  with  innumerable  meal-tickets  pinned  on  his  bor- 
rowed clothes  by  generous  friends.  It  seems  to  me  that 
Dickens  took  savage  satisfaction  in  jabbing  his  pen  into 
the  vitals  of  the  little  bright  creature,  with  a  rather  large 
head,  delicate  face,  and  sweet  voice,  who  had  no  idea  of 
detail,  time,  or  money,  and  whose  program  for  each  day's 
delight  was  papers,  conversation,  music,  mutton,  coffee, 
landscape,  fruit,  and  a  little  claret.  This  man  lived  that 
others  might  enjoy  the  luxury  of  generosity,  and  the  chief 
end  of  his  existence  was  a  cool  calculation  as  to  how  he 
could  cultivate  new  and  old  flowers  in  a  new  soil  of  gener- 
osity. He  believed  that  the  world  should  not  deny  to  him 
what  it  conceded  to  the  butterflies,  and  was  an  advocate  of 
drone  philosophy  by  which  a  lazy  buzzer  could  always  be 


Peacock's  Caricature  Work  271 

on  good  terms  with  working  bees.  Skimpole  took  some 
stock  in  Sterne's  starling,  because  he  fancied  that  he  was 
that  same  starling  only  different  in  so  much  as  by  some- 
body's sympathy  he  always  "got  out."  He  was  a  theo- 
rizer  on  the  responsibility  of  debt,  considering  himself  as 
irresponsible  and  blameless  as  those  who  irresponsibly  lent 
money  to  such  as  himself.  He  never  went  anywhere  for 
pain,  because  he  was  made  for  pleasure.  Who  of  us  has 
forgotten  this  bon  vivant  parasite,  with  his  daughters  three, 
living  in  the  shabby  luxury  of  dilapidated  Polygon,  in 
Somerstown,  who  finally  died  to  go  to  his  cloudland  leav- 
ing behind  an  autobiography  in  which  he  had  analyzed 
himself  as  "the  victim  of  a  combination  on  the  part  of 
mankind  to  ruin  an  amiable  child,"  and  his  chief  bene- 
factor Jarndyce  as  the  incarnation  of  selfishness. 

Thomas  Love  Peacock  sang  'since  fools  are  my  theme, 
let  satire  be  my  fiction' ' ;  thus,  by  caricaturing  prominent 
politicians,  philosophers,  and  poetic  savants,  as  they  dis- 
coursed on  the  governmental  policies  and  fads  of  their 
day,  he  connects  Fielding  and  Smollett  with  Disraeli  and 
Dickens.  Peacock  helped  people  fiction  with  such  crea- 
tures as  Lady  Caroline  Lamb's  Glenarvon  (Byron),  Lady 
Caroline  Lamb's  Zamohr  (Bulwer-Lytton)  in  Ada  Reis; 
Disraeli's  Vivian  Grey  (Byron)  writhing  in  the  arms  of 
Mrs.  Felix  Lorraine  (Lady  Caroline  Lamb) ;  Lady  Mont- 
eagle  (Lady  Caroline  Lamb),  Lord  Cadurcis  (Lord  Byron), 
and  Marmion  Herbert  (Shelley)  in  Venetia;  and  such 
pictures  of  Byron  and  Shelley  as  Mrs.  Shelley  drew  in 
The  Last  Man  (1826)  and  Lodore  (1835) .  Bulwer  Lytton  's 
Falkland  of  1827  is  a  snap-shot  of  Byron,  as  is  also  Sir 
Reginald  Glanville  in  Pelham  (1828).  Disraeli  in  Con- 
in  gsby  (1844)  created  the  magnificent  Jew  Sidonia  (Baron 
A.  de  Rothschild)  and  an  elegant  Henry  Sydney  (Lord 
John  Manners) ;  and  later,  in  1866,  George  Eliot  portrayed 
the  fascinating  Felix  Holt   (Gerald  Massey)   addressing 


2J2  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  workingmen ;  in  1876,  George  Meredith  sketched 
Admiral  Maxse  one  of  his  friends  as  Nevil  Beauchamp, 
parading  in  the  glamour  of  English  political  life;  and  in 
1905,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  in  The  Marriage  of  William 
Ashe,  in  the  delineation  of  the  wild  thing  Kitty,  was  think- 
ing of  the  antics  of  Lord  Melbourne's  wife,  and  in  1906, 
before  depicting  Fenwick,  went  to  Romney  who  for  art's 
sake  had  sacrificed  his  wife. 

Peacock  followed  up  immortal  Scythrop  with  the 
drunken  god-butler  Prince  Seithenyn  (Canning),  Lord 
High  Commissioner  of  Royal  Embankment  in  The  Mis- 
fortunes of  Elphin  (1829),  who  defended  the  dyke  (the 
English  Constitution)  by  saying,  "  It  was  half  rotten  when 
I  was  born,  and  that  is  a  conclusive  reason  why  it  should 
be  three  parts  rotten  when  I  die.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing 
so  dangerous  as  innovation." 

In  Crotchet  Castle  (1831)  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and 
Southey  appear  as  the  much  abused  Mr.  Skionar,  Mr. 
Wilful  Wontsee,  and  Mr.  Rumblesack  Shantsee.  Scott 
and  Brougham  are  not  spared  but  come  in  for  ridicule  and 
denunciation.  Outside  the  mirage  of  allegory  in  slight 
characterization  in  a  dialogue,  interspersed  with  lyrics 
(Peacock's  characteristic  method),  moves  Lady  Clarinda 
by  the  slow  drift  of  canal-pinnace  experiences  until  she 
gives  away  her  heart  to  Captain  Fitzchrome  who,  unlike 
the  rich  Crotchet,  Junior,  does  not  represent  the  price  of  a 
rotten  borough.  Miss  Susannah  Touchandgo,  who  is  cast 
off  by  Crotchet,  Junior,  and  afterwards  is  caught  and  kept 
by  Mr.  Chainmail,  is  one  of  Peacock's  best  examples  of 
filigree  work  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  she  was  delicately 
pieced  together  from  recollections  of  his  early  sweetheart, 
who  through  a  misunderstanding  threw  herself  by  mar- 
riage into  the  arms  of  another  man.  Dr.  Folliott,  the  Tory 
abettor  of  abuses  and  the  denouncer  of  whimwhams  and 
mumbo  jumbos,  will  be  remembered  perhaps  longer  than 


Peacock's  "Gryll  Grange"  273 

his  double,  Dr.  Opimian  in  Gryll  Grange  (i860).  Gryll 
Grange,  outside  of  the  Aristophanic  comedy,  put  on  in 
London  representing  Circe,  Gryllus,  and  three  spirit - 
rappers,  seems  to  me  a  repetition  of  Peacock's  ideas  on 
scientific,  moral,  educational,  and  political  reform.  In 
i860  Peacock  would  seem  to  admit  that  the  march  of 
mind  had  accomplished  little,  that  everything  was  wrong 
and  wanted  mending.  Obstreperous  scientists  seemed 
to  be  threatening  the  whole  race  with  suicide.  The 
world  seemed  to  be  under  the  domination  of  a  Panto- 
pragmatic  Society  whose  President  was  Lord  Facing- 
both-ways.  This  organization  had  divided  its  work  into 
departments  which  were  to  meddle  with  everything  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest.  To  old  Peacock  it  seemed  as  if 
even  those  ghosts  formerly  seen  on  the  stage  in  Lewis's 
Castle  Spectre  had  deteriorated,  since  they  refused  to 
appear  unless  summoned  by  rappings.  The  devil,  who 
had  walked  up  and  down  England  in  1818,  was  the  same 
old  devil  in  i860;  but  even  Apollyon  had  deteriorated  by 
the  contamination  of  modernity  since  the  days  of  Mr. 
Toobad,  the  Manichaean  Millenarian. 

Now  caricature  work  that,  in  18 16,  attracted  Peacock 
also  appealed  to  Lord  Melbourne's  wife  who  in  fiction  and 
actual  life  pushed  herself  to  the  foreground  as  a  most 
interesting  serio-comic  heroine  of  romance.  The  wildly 
impulsive  Lady  Caroline  Lamb  picked  up  the  pen  of 
caricature  in  18 16,  the  year  in  which  Headlong  Hall  of 
Peacock's  was  published.  Glenarvon  is  an  autobiographi- 
cal account  of  the  flirtation  which  she  carried  on  with 
Lord  Byron  who,  as  "the  spirit  of  evil,"  united  "the 
malice  and  petty  vices  of  a  woman  to  the  perfidy  and 
villainy  of  a  man."  Calantha,  the  wife  of  Lord  Avon- 
dale,  succumbs  to  the  piratic  attacks  of  Glenarvon  and 
lives  to  learn  that  "that  which  causes  the  tragic  end  of  a 
woman's  life  is  often  but  a  moment  of  amusement  and  folly 
18 


274  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  the  history  of  a  man  " ;  and  her  added  sorrow  is  that  she 
compelled  her  noble-minded  husband  to  take  back  what 
a  poetical  Lothario  had  abandoned.  Miss  Monmouth 
(Miss  Milbanke)  and  the  Princess  of  Madagascar  (Lady- 
Holland)  are  interesting  abstractions  who  may  have  acted 
and  spoken  as  the  individuals  whom  they  represent. 
Perhaps  the  best  scene  in  the  novel  is  that  of  the  murder  of 
Lady  Margaret  Buchanan.  The  general  plot  is  wretched 
containing  only  one  cleverly  repressed  climax,  the  dis- 
closure of  the  way  in  which  Glenarvon  played  two  roles. 
The  background  conforming  tq  and  controlling  characters 
in  tragical  action  is  the  militant  societies  of  Irishmen  ready 
to  die  for  the  cause.  The  trouble  with  the  whole  novel  is 
that  we  are  not  satisfied  with  the  portrait  of  Lord  Byron  as 
Glenarvon.  We  feel  certain  that  Lady  Caroline  Lamb 
did  not  know  the  true  Lord  Byron,  for,  as  he  himself  said, 
he  did  not  sit  long  enough  for  the  picture. 

Graham  Hamilton  (1822)  is  the  story  of  a  Scotch  hero 
who,  after  ruining  his  life  in  London,  flees  to  America  as 
an  asylum  of  remorse.  At  the  pivotal  moment  of  his 
career  his  fine  old  uncle  Sir  Malcolm  had  tried  to  save 
him  from  the  passionately  admired  Lady  Orville  by 
arranging  a  marriage  with  his  cousin  the  sweet  and  gentle 
Gertrude,  but  the  old  uncle's  tactics  failed  because  young 
Graham  felt  that  he  must  see  Lady  Orville  once  more  to 
say  farewell.  At  the  end  of  the  great  ball  at  the  Orville 
mansion  there  was  a  seizure  of  the  household  goods  by 
the  sheriff,  and  Graham,  overcome  by  emotions,  followed 
Lady  Orville  to  her  boudoir  to  offer  to  pay  off  the  debt; 
and,  as  the  officers  of  the  law  entered,  they  caught  him  in 
the  act  of  pressing  his  arm  too  far  about  Lady  Orville's 
waist  in  the  endeavor  to  aid  her  at  this  hard  hour  of  her 
life.  The  public  scandal  that  ensued  ruined  Lady  Orville 
and  killed  Gertrude  and  the  dear  old  uncle.  And  America 
loomed  on  the  horizon  for  the  man  who  could  never  make 


Lady  Caroline  Lamb's  "Ada  Reis"     275 

reparation  for  the  sufferings  he  had  inflicted.  Lady- 
Caroline  Lamb  in  the  characterization  of  the  old  miser 
Sir  Malcolm  achieved  success.  He  is  humorously  and 
pathetically  drawn  in  an  eccentric  blindness  to  the  faults 
and  bad  habits  of  his  nephew.  He  stood  by  Graham  to 
the  last  and  his  love  for  him  was  not  shaken  even  to  his 
last  breath.  Sir  Malcolm  as  a  type-portraiture  shows 
that  Lady  Caroline  Lamb  knew  Scotch  men  and  their 
proverbial  stinginess,  and  that  once  in  a  while  a  close- 
fisted  Scotchman  can  be  found  who  can  exemplify  the 
adage  "near  is  my  shirt,  but  nearer  is  my  kin." 

Ada  Reis,  A  Tale  (1823),  the  third,  last,  and  best  of  Lady 
Caroline  Lamb's  novels,  relates  the  experiences  of  Ada 
Reis,  a  Georgian,  who  in  Italy,  Spain,  Tripoli,  and  South 
America,  lived  as  a  Don  Juan  and  as  a  cut-throat.  In 
Calabria,  in  1729,  maddened  by  jealousy,  he  murdered 
Bianca  di  Castamela  and  seized  Fiormonda,  his  own  and 
Bianca's  daughter,  compelling  her  to  be  brought  up  in  the 
atmosphere  of  his  wild  career  of  crime  which  was  the  in- 
evitable result  of  the  worship  of  the  Jew  Kabkarra,  the 
evil  afrit.  Zamohr,  the  half-brother  of  Kabkarra' s,  a  good 
genius  and  a  guardian  angel,  watched  over  the  growing 
Fiormonda  and  constantly  waged  war  with  Kabkarra  for 
the  possession  of  her  soul.  By  reason  of  the  vanity, 
levity,  and  love  of  the  world  which  seemed  to  control 
Fiormonda,  Zamohr  was  temporarily  compelled  to  aban- 
don her  to  the  counsels  of  Kabkarra.  After  some  time 
Fiormonda  fell  in  love  with  Condulmar,  and  in  South 
America  became  the  mistress  of  this  wicked  son  of  Zuban- 
yann.  Her  punishment  was  death,  after  which  she  was 
made  Queen  of  the  underworld  in  the  palace  of  Zuban- 
yann  where  she  sat  on  a  throne  with  Condulmar  as  her 
consort  by  her  side. 

Lady  Caroline  Lamb's  hell  is  in  an  up-to-date  hall  in  a 
modern  mansion  in  which  move  all  kinds  of  sinners  from 


276  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  suffragette,  who  had  meddled  in  politics,  to  her  who 
was  being  given  a  Parisian  diet  because  she  had  lived  on 
the  English  passion  and  fashion  plan  in  profligate  London. 
At  the  request  of  Fiormonda  and  the  assembled  multitude, 
Condulmar  decided  to  give  to  all  his  miserable  devotees 
one  chance  of  regaining  kindness,  love,  purity,  and  truth 
in  Zamohr's  realm,  provided  they  should  be  able  to  resist 
the  terrible  temptations  which  first  had  led  them  to  be- 
come worshipers  of  Kabkarra.  These  temptations  were 
subtly  presented  to  each  and  all.  With  the  power  of 
a  Beckford  Lady  Caroline  Lamb  shows  that  there  was  no 
escape  from  the  hell  of  their  own  natures,  since  on  the  day 
of  probation  each  yielded  to  his  particular  ruling  passion. 
Before  the  evening  had  concluded, 

the  pretended  patriot  had  sold  himself  for  hire;  the  minister 
had  betrayed  his  king;  the  king,  in  his  resolves,  had  oppressed 
his  country;  the  son  had  forsaken  his  parent;  the  parent  had 
misspent  the  heritage  of  his  children;  the  virgin  had  renounced 
her  honour;  the  wife  had  forgotten  her  vow;  the  ambitious 
man  had  become  mean;  and  the  infidel,  after  enjoying  all  the 
blessings  of  a  long  life  in  a  fair  and  wonderful  world,  denied  his 
Creator ! 

Ada  Reis  was  given  the  chance  to  refuse  to  kill  Bianca  di 
Castamela,  but  he  savagely  re-murdered  her.  Condulmar 
in  all  beauty  and  seductiveness  asked  that  Fiormonda 
should  forgive  him. 

She  looked  upon  him  and  love,  more  dangerous  than  an 
infectuous  fever,  caught  from  his  glance  new  fuel  wherewith 
to  consume  her; — she  hesitated;  she  had  forgotten  his  cruelty 
— his  wickedness:  she  adored  him,  and  she  saw  that  her  attach- 
ment was  returned.  She  felt  again  with  all  the  confiding 
innocence,  the  ardor,  the  enthusiasm  of  first  youth,  for  to  that 
period  had  she  returned.     The  moment  of  temptation  had 


Susan  Ferrier's  "Marriage"  277 

recurred  and  human  frailty  could  scarcely  resist:  suddenly 
springing  from  its  delusions  she  knelt  and  prayed  for  support. 

At  this  supreme  moment,  Fiormonda's  soul  passed  into 
the  keeping  of  Zamohr  who  carried  her  spirit  and  body  to 
the  banks  of  the  Orinoco,  where  among  the  Jesuits  her  life 
was  reconstructed  so  that  she  died  a  Christian,  but  out  of 
her  grave  there  forever  grew  the  poisonous  manzanillo. 

Beckford's  Vathek,  Lewis's  The  Monk,  and  Scott's  The 
Monastery,  undoubtedly  influenced  the  creation  of  certain 
parts  of  Ada  Reis.  Ada  Reis,  a  devotee  of  voluptuous, 
sinful  Kabkarra,  is  another  Caliph  Vathek,  another 
Zeluco,  an  Ambrosio,  or  a  Schedoni,  or  a  Thomas  Hope's 
Anastasius.  This  Georgian  rascal,  in  oriental  duplicity, 
was  the  immediate  predecessor  of  James  Morier's  crafty, 
subtle  Hajji  Baba  of  Ispahan.  Fiormonda  allegorically 
represents  Lady  Caroline  Lamb;  Count  Condulmar  is 
Lord  Byron;  and  Zamohr,  Zevahir,  Phaos,  the  beautiful 
guardian  angel,  who  saves  Fiormonda  from  Condulmar 
and  Ada  Reis,  is  Bulwer,  who  at  one  time  burned  some 
incense  before  the  shrine  in  which  was  the  admired  image 
of  Lady  Caroline  Lamb.  Since  Lord  Melbourne's  wife 
tagged  allegorical  fiction  with  ethical  admonishments  for 
those  who  by  their  idleness  are  in  "constant  danger  of 
becoming  the  prey  of  wicked  feelings  and  corrupt  pas- 
sions," and  was  large  and  charitable  in  her  judgment  of 
others  on  the  pages  of  her  three  novels,  we  should  be 
sympathetic  as  we  feel  the  uneven  literary  pulse  of  that 
personality  that  revealed  all  her  weaknesses  for  the  ameli- 
oration not  only  of  herself,  but  of  all  women  with  water- 
nixy  souls. 

One  moves  easily  from  Peacock  and  Lady  Caroline 
Lamb  into  the  Smollettian  caricature  work  of  Susan  E. 
Ferrier  the  Scotch  Jane  Austen.  What  reader  can  fail 
to  chuckle  to  his  heart's  content  as  he  sees  a  pair  of  worsted 


278  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

stockings  and  black  shoes  resembling  buckets  stepping 
from  a  high-roofed,  square-bottomed,  pea-green  chariot  in 
front  of  Glenfern  Castle?  And  as  these  extremities  begin 
to  move,  the  reader  glancing  higher  notes  the  large- 
flowered  chintz  raiment  drawn  through  the  pocket  holes 
and  a  faded  red  cloth  jacket  and,  moreover,  he  sees  on  the 
head  of  this  formidable  apparition  a  stupendous  fabric 
in  the  form  of  a  cap  on  the  summit  of  which  is  perching  a 
black  beaver  hat  &  la  poissarde.  This  Lady  Maclaughlan, 
advancing  toward  the  castle  waving  in  one  hand  a  small 
black  satin  muff  and  in  the  other  a  gold-headed  walking- 
stick,  to  be  entertained  by  the  troubled  sisters  Miss 
Grizzie,  Miss  Jacky,  and  Miss  Nicky,  in  honor  of  Lady 
Juliana,  who  had  just  come  from  London,  is  the  central 
figure  of  fun  in  the  most  ludicrous  scene  constructed 
anywhere  in  Susan  Ferrier's  fiction.  Sir  Sampson,  Lady 
Maclaughlan's  invalid  husband,  who  is  carried  about  and 
deposited  at  will  by  a  Philistine  lacquey,  and  who  is 
stuttering  with  rage  because  of  the  treatment  given  him  by 
his  virago  wife  and  by  being  compelled  by  Miss  Grizzie  to 
swallow  a  dose  of  her  own  stomach  lotion  instead  of  his 
Lady's  cough-tincture,  is  in  dramatic  language  "a  perfect 
scream";  and  at  the  card-table  at  whist  they  are  all 
"screams."  In  this  novel  Marriage  (1818)  Juliana,  the 
spoiled  daughter  of  Lord  Courtland's,  who  had  run  away 
to  Scotland  to  be  married  to  Henry  Douglas,  and  who  is 
refused  support  by  her  father,  is  an  original  creation  in 
the  matter  of  being  a  heartless,  spoiled  child-wife  at  all 
times  quite  unconscious  of  her  own  perfidious  actions. 
Lady  Juliana  with  her  pugs,  squirrel,  and  macaw,  became 
in  1849-50  Dickens's  Dora  with  Jip.  Before  the  year 
18 18,  however,  Lady  Juliana  had  been  portrayed  by 
Daniel  Defoe.  Colonel  Jack  had  just  such  a  wife,  who 
ruined  him  by  her  extravagances.  The  Colonel,  how- 
ever, had  sense  enough  to  divorce  her.    Driven  across  the 


Susan  Ferrier's  Lady  Juliana  279 

Atlantic  to  Virginia  by  reason  of  his  wife's  debts,  Colonel 
Jack  began  life  anew.  Finally  among  his  slaves  his 
divorced  wife  appeared.  They  moved  toward  each  other 
in  the  glory  of  a  reconciliation,  for  divorce  had  brought  her 
to  her  senses.  Jack  then  married  her  for  the  second  time. 
Henry  Douglas  by  Lady  Juliana  was  driven  into  the  army 
to  die  in  a  foreign  land  because  he  had  not  the  determi- 
nation of  assertive  Colonel  Jack.  Defoe  divorced  Colonel 
Jack  from  his  wife  to  give  him  happiness;  Susan  Ferrier 
killed  Henry  Douglas  to  give  him  his ;  and  Charles  Dickens 
gently  removed  Dora  so  that  David  could  try  conclusions 
with  the  sensible  Agnes.  The  whimsical  Lady  Juliana 
with  perverted  tastes  wickedly  abandoned  one  of  her  twin 
daughters  at  Glenfern  Castle  so  that  she  might  re-enter 
fashionable  society  in  London.  She  not  only  lived  to  see 
her  husband  disgraced,  but  Adelaide  the  daughter,  whom 
she  had  kept  and  trained,  dishonor  the  house.  Lady 
Juliana's  most  exquisite  punishment  must  have  been  that 
of  seeing  Mary  the  daughter,  who  had  been  brought  up  by 
her  husband's  Scotch  relative,  restore  honor  to  the  house 
by  a  happy  marriage,  which  was  indeed  one  of  love  in 
spite  of  all  hindrances  that  had  been  set  in  the  way  by  a 
mother  without  a  heart. 

Rosamond  Vincy  in  George  Eliot's  Middlemarch  (1871- 
72)  is  the  nearest  likeness  to  Lady  Juliana  that  we  have 
had  in  our  own  times.  Rosamond,  spoiled  by  the  luxu- 
rious bringing  up  of  her  father's,  and  Doctor  Lydgate 
plunged  into  marriage  on  debt  and  kept  it  up.  She  was  a 
basil  plant  that  grew  out  of  Lydgate's  murdered  brains. 
Her  happiness  in  married  life  consisted  in  having  the  small 
details  go  her  way.  Her  unruffled  gaudier ie  is  what  ex- 
asperates the  reader  as  he  sees  her  walking  along  oblivi- 
ous of  the  great  issues  of  life.  Her  ethical  make-up  is 
realized  by  listening  to  the  phrases  which  fall  from  her 
lips.    These  phrases  correspond  to  her  embroidered  collar 


280  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  her  hands  set  off  with  rings.  Self -consciousness  of 
manner  is  always  an  expensive  substitute  for  simplicity. 
Rosamond  loses  her  baby  by  not  obeying  her  husband. 
She  is  a  mild  creature  with  a  terrible  tenacity  insisting 
that  good  housekeeping  is  simply  ordering  the  best  of 
everything.  Under  the  pressure  of  the  didacticism  of  such 
a  shallow  brain  Dr.  Lydgate  runs  up  bills,  neglects  his 
work,  and  becomes  a  small  doctor.  Dr.  Lydgate  became 
a  mental  degenerate  by  reason  of  trying  to  carry  the 
burden  of  a  marriage  that  stayed  with  him  like  murder. 
Believing  in  the  regeneration  of  Rosamond  by  marriage 
transportation,  he  was  duped  to  the  end  of  his  career, 
and  could  only  become  a  moderate  success  because  of  the 
drawback  of  a  second-rate  wife  who  had  always  been 
ashamed  of  his  profession.  The  reader  feels  as  if  the  fate 
which  came  to  Susan  E.  Ferrier's  Henry  Douglas  would 
have  been  a  happy  one  for  George  Eliot's  Dr.  Lydgate; 
and  the  wonder  is  that  Lydgate  stood  by  his  proposition 
to  the  end  of  his  days.  If,  however,  he  had  divorced  her, 
one  feels  sure  that  such  a  procedure  would  never  have 
rehabilitated  Rosamond  so  that  Lydgate  like  Defoe's 
Colonel  Jack  would  have  married  his  former  wife  a 
second  time. 

Another  success  in  caricature  greater  than  any  to  be 
found  in  Marriage  is  that  of  the  ubiquitous,  spying,  lying, 
imaginative  Miss  Pratt  in  Inheritance  (1824).  For  forty 
years  Miss  Pratt  with  vibrating  rabbit's  ears,  desultory 
gabble,  and  gnat-like  attacks  had  pestered  Lord  Rossville; 
and  she  was  a  meddler  with  the  lovers,  being  a  constant 
thorn  in  the  side  of  the  heroine  Gertrude  St.  Clair.  By 
continually  quoting  the  sayings  of  her  nephew,  Anthony 
Whyte,  who  has  never  had  any  existence  at  all,  Miss 
Pratt  is  a  forerunner  of  Sairey  Gamp,  of  Dickens's  Martin 
Chuzzlewit,  whose  mythical  Mrs.  Harris,  a  friend  of  thirty- 
five  years'  standing,  is  punctured  into  total  collapse  by 


Susan  Ferrier's  "Destiny"  281 

Mrs.  Prig's  sarcastic  stab,  "I  don't  believe  there's  no  sich 
person."  This  Miss  Pratt  is  a  descendant  too  of  Clarissa 
Harlowe's  as  she  morbidly  manages  inside  of  a  hearse 
to  beat  her  way  into  the  stronghold  of  her  much-fearing, 
sore-afraid  Lord  Rossville  that  she  may  thus  sensationally 
murder  him. 

The  novels  of  Susan E.Ferrier  are  sluggish  in  movement, 
are  poorly  plotted,  and  are  filled  with  old  and  prolix  situ- 
ations in  which  characterization  resolves  itself  largely 
into  external  portraiture.  Sometimes  a  subordinate  char- 
acter needs  to  be  studied  before  it  is  instinctively  felt  that 
a  masterpiece  has  been  produced  by  a  second-rate  genius. 
For  example  in  Destiny  (1831)  the  hilarity  of  the  black- 
eyed,  provincial,  little  thick-bodied  representative  of  the 
fag-end  of  Glenroy's  clan  enheartens  the  reader  to  go  on  to 
a  final  dissipation  of  the  Glenroy  woes.  Dear  Mrs.  Ma- 
cauley,  the  feminine  Dominie  Sampson,  who  avers  that 
11  Hieland  blood  "  can  not  be  bought  and  that  we  are  all  bad 
creatures — the  best  of  us,  is  a  fine  type  of  Scotch  woman 
who  at  the  age  of  seventy  by  her  constant  life  of  sacrifice 
shows  that  happiness  consists  in  passing  it  on  to  others. 
"At  no  age  are  we  unable  to  serve  God  in  some  shape  or 
other"  is  one  of  the  aphorisms  of  "dear  Macky " ;  and,  for 
the  happiness  emanating  to  others  from  her  rural  cottage 
and  from  the  mean  house  that  she  was  compelled  to  live 
in  while  in  London,  we  feel  that  an  all- wise  Providence 
gave  it  all  back  to  Mrs.  Macauley  and  twice  as  much  as 
the  reward  came  in  the  Highland  reel  of  joy  danced  by  her 
at  the  wedding  of  Glenroy's  daughter  to  Ronald  Malcolm. 
Readers  of  the  Ferrier  fiction,  when  asked  what  novel  is 
their  favorite,  almost  invariably  reply,  ''Destiny,  because 
of  the  pathos  of  its  emotional  situations  " ;  but,  when  these 
situations  are  analyzed,  they  are  branded  with  the  trade- 
mark of  the  Mackenzie  manufactory,  even  such  as  that  of 
Ronald  drenched  by  a  geyser  of  tears  as  he  approaches 


282  Motives  in  Enelish  Fiction 


&J 


Inch  Orran  and  departs  therefrom.  Susan  E.  Ferrier 
went  over  Scotland  in  a  small  way  attempting  to  do  for  the 
Scotch  people  of  her  time  what  the  great  Sir  Walter  had 
done  for  the  Scotch  living  in  the  mid-eighteenth  century ; 
and  Destiny  is  the  last  good  glimpse  at  the  feudal  sway  of 
one  of  the  nineteenth  century  prodigal,  Highland  chief- 
tains who  were  to  pass  from  Scottish  life  forever.  At 
best  Miss  Ferrier  was  a  sister  shadow  of  Scott's  assuming 
at  times  the  shape  of  Jane  Austen's  or  Maria  Edgeworth's 
or  Fanny  Burney's. 

Mary,  the  gifted  daughter  of  Godwin  and  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft's,  who  was  half-sister  of  the  ill-fated  Fanny 
Imlay  and  also  a  half-sister  of  that  still  more  wretched 
Jane  Clairmont  (Shelley's  Constantia,  over  whose  grave  in 
Campo  Santo  della  Misericordia  di  Sta.  Maria  d'Antello 
is  written  "She  passed  her  life  in  suffering,  expiating  not 
only  her  faults,  but  also  her  virtues"),  gave  to  the  world 
Frankenstein;  or,  the  Modern  Prometheus  (1818)  which  is 
a  direct  connecting  link  between  her  father's  (Godwin's) 
St.  Leon  and  Maturin's  Melmoth  the  Wanderer.  St.  Leon, 
the  necromancer,  developed  into  Frankenstein  who  created 
that  monster,  who  burned  himself  to  ashes  in  the  Polar 
regions  only  that  he  might  afterwards  be  raised  phcenix- 
like  for  more  crimes  by  Maturin,  who  in  1820  re-named 
the  fiend  Melmoth  the  Wanderer.  We  all  know  how  Mrs. 
Shelley's  novel  has  been  adversely  criticized  because  of 
the  chronicle  method  of  narration.  Perhaps  it  would 
have  been  better  if  there  had  been  no  Captain  Walton  to 
mar  the  narrative,  but  we  forget  all  about  Captain  Walton 
when  we  listen  to  his  story  of  Frankenstein's  pursuit  of 
the  monster,  polar  sufferings,  and  death,  and  the  remorse 
which  seized  the  monster  for  having  caused  the  agonies 
and  death  of  his  creator  Frankenstein.  The  heart-broken 
utterances  of  the  fiend,  prior  to  his  leaping  through  the 
cabin-window  to  the  raft  on  which  he  disappears  among 


Mrs.  Shelley's  "Frankenstein"         283 

the  ice-floes  into  darkness  and  distance,  are  singularly 
effective  in  emotionalizing  a  scene  which,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  style,  is  nowhere  else  equaled  in  Mrs.  Shelley's 
fiction.  The  nearest  approach  to  such  style  moving  in 
the  pathetic  is  the  story  that  the  monster  tells  to  Franken- 
stein at  Geneva  which  makes  the  reader  feel  that  Mil- 
ton's Satan  was  infinitely  better  off  than  this  creation  of 
Frankenstein's  who  had  been  thrown  out  into  the  world  of 
civilization  a  grown-up  man  to  rear  himself  as  a  child- 
savage  without  receiving  directly  from  anyone  except 
through  his  own  efforts  the  benefits  of  the  traditions  of  the 
human  race. 

Valperga;  or  the  Life  and  Adventures  of  Castruccio,  Prince 
of  Lucca  (1823),  as  a  historical  study  of  Guelph  and 
Ghibeline,  is  almost  as  much  of  a  failure  as  Perkin  Warbeck 
(1830)  the  disastrous  portrayal  of  the  times  of  Henry  VII 
in  England.  In  Valperga  there  is  only  one  interesting 
character  the  priestess  Beatrice  who  believes  in  the 
oracular  utterances  of  herself;  and,  when  she  is  disillusion- 
ized, the  process  is  as  painful  as  that  ordeal  of  fire,  which 
opened  the  eyes  of  George  Eliot's  priest  Savonarola. 
Mrs.  Shelley  in  1826  was  still  suffering  from  the  effects  of 
the  twenty-minute  squall  which  had  drowned  her  husband 
and  friend  Williams  in  the  Bay  of  Spezzia  off  Lerici ;  and 
the  gloom  of  this  catastrophe  pervades  The  Last  Man 
(1826) .  In  the  novel,  Adrian,  the  second  Earl  of  Windsor 
and  son  of  an  ex-queen  of  England,  is  a  sketch  of  the  poet 
of  Adonais;  Clara  is  the  daughter  of  Lord  Raymond 
(Lord  Byron) ;  and  Lionel  Verney,  the  narrator  of  the  inci- 
dents of  the  plot,  is  probably  Mrs.  Shelley  looking  at  her 
husband  through  the  eyes  of  a  man.  The  novel  except  in 
the  characterization  of  Adrian  is  of  little  worth  until  we 
reach  the  closing  pages  which  describe  the  world-destroy- 
ing plague  that  drives  the  few  remaining  characters  from 
England  to   Switzerland.     The   poetic   prose   swings   us 


284  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

from  the  Alps  to  Venice  where  we  see  Clara,  Adrian,  and 
Verney,  the  only  inhabitants  in  the  world,  set  sail  in  a  frail 
bark  lured  by  Adrian's  wish  to  seek  Athens  and  a  home  in 
the  Cyclades  whereby  they  may  escape  universal  death. 
The  voyage  is  not  successful,  for  in  a  terrible  storm  Adrian 
and  Clara  are  drowned  and  Lionel  Verney  survives  as  the 
last  man.  When  one  has  read  Byron's  "I  had  a  dream 
which  was  not  all  a  dream,"  and  has  recited  Campbell's 
weirdly  fanciful  poem  The  Last  Man,  he  quotes  the  pro- 
phetic close  of  Adonais  as  a  sidelight  by  which  to  appreci- 
ate how  Mrs.  Shelley  gave  to  Adrian  exactly  the  beautiful 
death  which  her  husband  had  always  desired,  and  which 
Providence  had  assigned  in  1822. 

The  last  two  novels  written  by  Airs.  Shelley  were  Lodore 
(1835)  and  Falkner  (1837).  The  latter  is  worthless,  but 
the  former  deserves  a  cursory  glance  by  reason  of  the 
concealed  allegory  of  the  characters.  Lord  Lodore  is 
Lord  Byron ;  Cornelia  Santerre,  age  sixteen,  whom  Lodore 
had  met  in  Wales  and  afterwards  had  married  in  Berkeley 
Square,  London,  is  the  embodiment  of  the  combined 
qualities  of  Lady  Byron  and  Harriet  Shelley.  Lady 
Santerre,  the  mother  of  Cornelia,  also  possesses  the  attri- 
butes of  Lady  Byron.  Horatio  Saville  is  the  poet  Shelley ; 
Clorinda,  of  marmoreal  grace,  is  the  Emilia  Viviani,  the 
beautiful  Neapolitan  inmate  of  the  convent  of  St.  Anna, 
whose  beauty  Shelley  incarnated  in  Epipsy  chid  ion;  and 
Edward  Villiers  who  marries  Ethel,  the  daughter  of  Lord 
Lodore,  is  also  a  slight  sketch  of  the  poet  of  The  Ode  to  a 
Skylark.  The  plot  of  the  novel  is  wretched  by  reason  of 
excessive  crayfish  movement  which  always  mars  coherent 
sequence  even  in  a  good  novel  such  as  George  Eliot's 
Daniel  Deronda.  On  opening  Lodore  we  are  with  Lodore 
(Lord  Byron)  and  his  daughter  on  the  plains  of  Illinois; 
then  there  is  crayfish  action  to  explain  what  sent  them  to 
America  to  spend  twelve  years  until  Lady  Santerre  dies 


Hope's  "Anastasius"  285 

in  England;  and  then  it  is  that  Lord  Lodore  decides  to 
return  to  Europe,  but  unfortunately  for  the  novel  is 
killed  in  New  York  in  a  duel  by  moonlight.  After  his 
death  there  is  no  life  in  the  narrative. 

Lord  Byron  once  said  to  the  Countess  of  Blessington 
that  Anastasius,  or  Memoirs  of  a  Greek  (18 19)  by  Thomas 
Hope  had  made  him  weep  twice — one  that  he  had  not  writ- 
ten it,  the  other  that  Hope  had.  Sydney  Smith  also 
praised  it  highly  claiming  that  its  merit  was  extraordinary, 
since  the  piece  of  fiction  had  been  written  by  a  gentleman 
composed  of  chairs,  tables,  and  sofas.  The  opinion  of  a 
few  critics  in  our  own  time  has  been  that  readers  are 
likely  to  become  somewhat  wearied  before  reaching  the 
close  of  the  last  volume.  The  present  writer  feels  that 
nearly  every  page  of  the  novel  has  been  charmingly  written 
in  such  polished  English  that  one  would  almost  give  his 
right  eye  to  possess  its  fluent  accuracy  and  phrasal  orna- 
mentation. Thomas  Hope's  style  has  the  grace  of  fine 
writing,  the  trick  of  which  is  so  concealed  that  it  baffles 
a  rhetorician  to  analyze  its  captivating  qualities  which 
successfully  support  a  fictitious  superstructure  that  is 
conformable  to  the  manners  of  the  nations  through  which 
Anastasius,  the  modern  Ulysses  of  Chios,  traveled.  The 
historical  and  statistical  parts  pertaining  to  eighteenth 
century  affairs  in  the  Orient  are  correct.  We  become  well 
acquainted  with  the  customs  of  the  islanders  of  Greece, 
visit  Constantinople,  Cairo,  Mecca,  Damascus,  Bucharest, 
admire  the  Albanians,  then  wheel  from  European  shores 
to  Symrna,  Bagdad,  and  thence  to  the  desert,  to  Acre,  to 
Alexandria,  to  Naples,  to  Trieste,  and  to  the  Carinthian 
mountains.  Such  was  the  scenery  on  the  sides  of  the 
stream  on  which  Anastasius's  life-boat  was  afloat.  For 
thirty-five  years  Anastasius's  vessel  scudded  down  the 
stream  of  Epicureanism  yawing  by  reason  of  the  sudden 
side-puffs  of  ambition.     Anastasius  was  everything  from 


286  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

a  quack  doctor,  an  interpreter,  a  Turkish  saint,  a  mer- 
chant, an  adopted  son  of  a  Bey,  a  governor  of  a  province, 
to  a  mercenary  soldier.  Anastasius,  of  the  Zeluco  type, 
at  the  end  of  his  atrocious  career  endures  the  agony  of 
knowing  that  he  has  been  the  chief  agent  in  bringing  about 
the  death  of  his  beautiful  little  boy  Alexis,  his  only  son  by 
Euphrosyne,  whom  he  had  ruined  in  Smyrna  as  he  had 
ruined  Helena  in  Chios.  When  this  cannibal  Anastasius 
on  the  felucca,  bearing  toward  Trieste,  hugs  to  his  breast 
his  little  dying  Alexis,  we  feel  as  sorry  for  him  as  for 
Heathcliff  when  emaciated  Catharine  Linton  dies  to  all 
purposes  in  his  arms,  or  for  dark,  sternly-featured  Guy 
Livingstone  of  George  A.  Lawrence's  when  for  the  last 
time  he  tightly  presses  to  his  heart  his  darling  Constance 
Brandon,  who  had  been  slowly  moved  to  the  mausoleum 
by  the  artifices  of  himself  and  his  hated  accomplice  Flora 
Bellasys.  Emily  Bronte  says  that  even  Heathcliff  could 
weep  on  great  occasions,  and  tears  such  as  angels  weep 
burst  forth  as  Anastasius  clings  to  the  little  cold  body  of 
Alexis  as  his  all  in  the  world  is  being  buried  in  the  Laza- 
retto. None  of  the  death-bed  scenes  in  our  fiction  is  more 
pregnant  with  pathos  than  that  of  Alexis.  Anastasius 
by  the  first  person  method  of  narration  thus  describes  his 
agony : 

Lest  he  might  feel  ill  at  ease  in  my  lap,  I  laid  him  down  upon 
my  cloak,  and  kneeled  by  his  side  to  watch  the  growing  change 
in  his  features.  The  present  now  was  all  to  me:  the  future  I 
knew  I  no  longer  should  reck.  Feeling  my  breath  close  to  his 
cheek,  he  half  opened  his  eye,  looked  as  if  after  a  long  absence 
again  suddenly  recognizing  his  father,  and — putting  out  his 
little  mouth — seemed  to  crave  one  last  token  of  love.  The 
temptation  was  too  powerful :  I  gently  pressed  my  lip  upon  that 
of  my  babe,  and  gathered  from  it  the  proffered  kiss.  Life's 
last  faint  spark  was  just  going  forth,  and  I  caught  it  on  the 
threshold.     Scarce  had  I  drawn  back  my  face,  when  all  respir- 


Morier's  "Hajji  Baba"  287 

ation  ceased.  His  eye-strings  broke,  his  features  fell,  and  his 
limbs  stiffened  for  ever.  All  was  over:  Alexis  was  no  more — 
Euphrosyne  avenged, — and  Anastasius  the  wretch  he  had  long 
deserved  to  be! 


Barry  Lyndon's  grief  over  his  boy  Bryan  has  not  received 
better  exposition  on  the  pages  of  Thackeray. 

There  is  great  similarity  between  Anastasius  and  Hajji 
Baba.  James  Morier's  production,  however,  seldom 
causes  us  to  weep  but  almost  always  to  laugh.  Thomas 
Hope's  novel  is  written  in  a  more  serious  vein.  The 
scene  of  Morier's  novel  is  pitched  farther  East  than  Hope's, 
in  Persia,  and  for  the  most  part  is  not  taken  out  of  that 
country.  At  times,  however,  Hajji  Baba  meets  the  Ye- 
zeedis,  the  devil-worshipers,  as  Anastasius  does;  and  he 
experiences  camp-life  among  the  Turcomans  and  the  Curds 
which  is  balanced  by  the  same  kind  of  existence  that 
Anastasius  led  among  the  Wahhabees  with  whom  he 
allied  himself  by  marrying  the  Bedoween  beauty,  Aische. 
The  tragical  love  story  of  Hajji  Baba  and  the  Curdish 
slave  Zeenab  is  balanced  by  that  of  Anastasius  and 
Helena.  One  would  venture  to  say  that  James  Morier 
had  carefully  read  Thomas  Hope's  three  volumes  before 
penning  Hajji  Baba.  If  Hajji  Baba  of  Ispahan  is  superior 
to  Anastasius,  it  is  because  Morier  had  a  greater  sense 
of  humor  than  Hope;  for  there  is  no  episode  in  Anastasius 
that  can  equal  that  where  Hajji,  trying  to  get  his  money  on 
the  death  of  his  father,  is  embarrassed  by  the  presence  of  a 
mother  who,  even  when  subjected  to  the  rice  ordeal,  shows 
us  that  it  is  a  wise  son  that  can  outwit  his  mother  in  Persia. 
Nor  has  Hope  anything  that  humorously  equals  that 
episode  which  presents  Hajji,  after  he  had  married  the 
Emir's  widow,  denounced  and  driven  out  by  his  wife's 
relatives  because  he  had  lied  about  his  wealth.  Another 
difference  between  the  two  novelists  lies  in  an  ethical 


288  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

point  of  view.  Morier  has  his  barber-sub-executioner 
rascal  emerge  as  an  unconscionable  confidant  of  the  Grand 
Vizier  from  his  oriental  duplicities  and  crimes,  while 
Thomas  Hope  throws  his  hero,  rich  in  the  possession  of  the 
loot  of  the  eastern  world,  on  his  knees  to  appease  that 
retributive  God  who  had  lost  patience  with  one  who  had 
been  the  epitome  of  all  the  questionable  methods  sanc- 
tioned by  the  oriental  life  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

It  was  a  good  thing  for  English  fiction  that  lovers 
should  love  like  Kara  Aziek  and  Don  Sebastian  of  Anna 
Maria  Porter's,  like  Aische  and  Anastasius,  and  like  the 
Armenian  Mariam  and  Yusuf  of  Morier's.  With  Thomas 
Hope  accurate,  realistic  orientalization  came  in  to  take 
the  place  of  the  inset  work  of  those  artists  who  had  never 
been  on  eastern  ground.  Anastasius  not  only  helped 
Morier  in  Hajji  Baba  (1824),  Zohrab  the  Hostage  (1832), 
Ayesha,  the  Maid  of  Kars  (1834),  Dut  aided  Disraeli  to 
orientalize  in  Contarini  Fleming  (1832),  Alroy  (1833), 
Tancred  (1847),  and  Julia  Pardoe  in  the  Romance  of  the 
Harem  (1839). 

In  the  year  that  Anastasius  was  published,  Mary 
Russell  Mitford  began  to  contribute  to  The  Lady's  Maga- 
zine sketches  of  rural  character  and  scenery  which  were 
afterwards  published  under  the  title  of  Our  Village  in  five 
series  from  1824  to  1832.  The  centre  of  the  rural  district 
in  which  Miss  Mitford  worked  was  Three  Mile  Cross,  a 
cluster  of  houses  on  the  Basingstoke  Road,  near  Reading, 
in  Berkshire  "where  the  scenery,  without  rising  into 
grandeur  or  breaking  into  wildness,  is  so  peaceful,  so 
cheerful,  so  varied,  and  so  thoroughly  English."  Miss  Mit- 
ford in  her  strolls  throughout  this  region  holds  up  for  in- 
spection the  country  folk  of  the  middling  classes  who  seem 
to  be  living  in  simple  honesty  and  for  the  most  part 
happy.  The  rural  characters  are  far  removed  from  "man- 
stifled  town"  and  factory-frowning  cities.     There  is  no 


Miss  Mitford's  "Our  Village"  289 

seamy  side  of  life  to  show,  because  Miss  Mitford  absolutely 
refuses  to  go  slumming.  When  death  falls  on  any  member 
of  the  community,  it  falls  upon  such  as  lightly  as  a  shadow 
from  a  cloud  as  when  the  vicar's  maid  is  stricken  in  her 
returned  lover's  arms;  or,  as  when  little  Harry  Lee  is 
carried  to  heaven  without  knowing  it  in  the  chalk-pit. 
Miss  Mitford's  soft  and  soothing  method  of  characteri- 
zation transfers  itself  readily  to  the  melancholy  manner 
of  her  descriptions  of  natural  scenery.  The  whole  park  in 
front  of  the  old  house  at  Aberleigh  creates  a  sweet  sadness 
by  reason  of  the  "noweriness  amidst  such  desolation;  it 
seems  the  triumph  of  nature  over  the  destructive  power  of 
man."  There  is  lavished  upon  the  scene  that  peculiarly 
pleasing  tone  of  pathos  that  was  inherited  from  the  descrip- 
tions of  natural  scenery  in  the  novels  of  Charlotte  Smith 
which  had  been  read  by  Miss  Mitford  when  a  young  girl. 
Readers  are  aware  of  this  atmosphere  of  modified  sorrow 
in  Tom  Cordery  and  in  Modern  Antiques.  In  the  latter, 
after  we  have  smiled  at  the  exterior  of  the  quaint  old 
lady  Mrs.  Frances,  who  had  once  walked  in  Richardson's 
flower-garden  and  still  doted  on  his  Sir  Charles  Grandison, 
and  extended  our  smile  to  a  grin  as  we  see  her  blushing, 
fidgeting  with  her  mittens  on  her  apron,  flirting  a  fan 
nearly  as  tall  as  herself,  and  holding  her  head  on  one  side 
with  that  peculiar  air  which  one  has  noted  in  shyer  birds, 
and  ladies  in  love,  in  order  to  attract  the  attention  of  her 
old  beau  to  whom  fifty  years  before  she  had  been  engaged, 
we  suddenly  feel  moisture  on  our  eyelids  and  the  grin 
subsides,  for  Miss  Mitford  herself  can  not  go  on  with  ex- 
ternalities, but  plunges  beneath  the  exterior  to  abandon 
a  humor  that  must  not  be  pushed  further  and  says: 

Rather  let  me  sigh  over  the  world  of  woe,  that  in  fifty  years 
of  hopeless  constancy  must  have  passed  through  that  maiden 
heart !     The  timid  hope ;  the  sickening  suspense ;  the  slow,  slow 


290  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

fear;  the  bitter  disappointment;  the  powerless  anger;  the 
relenting;  the  forgiveness;  and  then  again,  that  interest, 
kinder,  truer,  more  unchanging  than  friendship,  that  linger- 
ing woman's  love — Oh  how  can  I  jest  over  such  feelings? 
They  are  passed  away — for  she  is  gone,  and  he — but  they 
clung  by  her  to  the  last,  and  ceased  only  in  death. 


It  is  just  as  when  at  the  circus,  after  we  have  been  watch- 
ing the  favorite  clown  giving  his  thrills  of  fun,  we  are 
all  at  once  called  to  view  his  dead  body  behind  the  cur- 
tains: true  humor  and  true  pathos  clasp  hands  always 
across  the  coffin  and  refuse  to  be  separated.  Other 
sketches  which  have  become  favorites  are  My  School- 
fellows, Jack  Hatch,  and  An  Admiral  on  Shore.  The 
cabinet  pictures  moving  in  "our  market  town"  of  Belford 
Regis  (1835),  and  those  in  Atherton,  and  Other  Tales  (1854), 
are  in  every  way  inferior  to  those  in  Our  Village. 

Miss  Mitford  for  the  plan  of  Our  Village,  so  far  as 
describing  the  various  seasons  of  the  year,  is  indebted  to 
Gilbert  White's  Natural  History  and  Antiquities  of  Sel- 
borne,  and  for  the  possession  of  fluent  English  went  to 
Jane  Austen  "the  most  perfect  of  female  writers"  whose 
precise  diction  she  acquired  even  to  the  use  of  such  an 
adverb  as  "deedily"  current  in  Hampshire.  Miss  Mit- 
ford's  Our  Village  in  conception  and  style  is  reminis- 
cent of  Steele,  Addison,  Goldsmith,  Mrs.  Frances  Brooke, 
Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith,  and  Washington  Irving;  and  her 
influence  on  subsequent  writers  has  by  no  means  been 
small.  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall  (Anna  Maria  Fielding)  in  Sketches 
of  Irish  Character  (1829),  and  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Irish 
Life  (1838)  copied  the  manner  of  Miss  Mitford.  In  1835, 
Tennyson  wrote  Dora  an  unfigurative,  almost  monosylla- 
bic, simple  piece  of  pathetic  blank  verse,  the  austerity  of 
which  moved  Wordsworth  to  say  that  he  had  been  trying 
all  his  life  to  write  a  poem  like  Dora  but  had  failed.     Its 


Miss  Mitford  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  291 

simple,  poetical  language  was  inspired  by  the  simple  prose 
of  Miss  Mitford's  "DoraCreswell"  in  Our  Village;  and  its 
plan  was  changed  because  Miss  Mitford's  pastoral  like  all 
her  stories  is  a  novel  in  miniature  without  a  plot.  Dora 
is  a  child  in  Miss  Mitford's  sketch.  Tennyson  was  com- 
pelled to  work  out  a  new  conclusion  to  Miss  Mitford's 
story,  in  which  the  farmer  falls  at  once  into  his  niece's 
gentle  snare.  Dickens,  in  1836,  perhaps  fell  back  upon  the 
strength  of  Miss  Mitford  in  the  excellent  Sketches  by  Boz. 
Harriet  Martineau  not  only  turned  to  Maria  Edgeworth, 
but  to  Miss  Mitford  in  Deerbrook  (1839);  and  touches  of 
Miss  Mitford  can  be  detected  in  Mrs.  Gaskell' s  Moor- 
land Cottage  (1850) ;  and  there  is  a  still  closer  affinity 
between  Our  Village  and  Cranford  (1853) .  Miss  Mitford's 
Three  Mile  Cross,  Berkshire,  becomes  Mrs.  Gaskell's 
Knutsford,  Cheshire.  The  characters  in  Our  Village  all 
come  to  life  again  as  they  sadly  and  humorously  strut  up 
and  down  the  streets  of  Mrs.  Gaskell's  village.  There 
is  the  same  gentle  management  of  the  pathetic  as  when 
Captain  Brown  is  struck  down  by  the  new-fangled  machin- 
ery of  the  railroads  just  after  he  had  flung  aside  Pickwick 
Papers  to  save  the  life  of  a  little  girl;  and  then,  too,  there  is 
a  similarity  in  the  way  in  which  the  woes  of  former  times 
surge  in  like  the  tide  which  once  brought  in  English  men- 
of-war  to  carry  away  the  young  brother  of  Matty  to  fight 
against  Boney  and  to  seek  the  far  Orient  and  thus  cause 
the  death  of  his  mother  and  the  end  of  all  domestic 
joys  for  the  family.  Shadows  do  not  stay  long  in  sunny 
Berkshire;  nor  do  they  flicker  forever  in  Cheshire,  for  Mrs. 
Gaskell  by  the  pen  of  genial  humor  causes  the  tidal  wave 
to  recede  farther  and  farther,  assuring  us  that  goodness 
and  happiness  may  be  found  in  "the  fresh  air,  the  shade, 
and  the  sunshine  of  nature."  After  the  falling  of  the 
leaves  of  many  years,  Matty's  sorrows  are  dispelled  by  the 
sunny  home-coming  of  her  long-lost  brother,  Mr.  Peter, 


292  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

The  influence  of  Miss  Mitford's  Our  Village  with  its 
cross-sections  of  village  and  country  life  was  felt  by 
Harriet  Martineau  when  she  wrote  Deerbrook  (1839),  in 
which  we  breathe  the  still  air  on  Dingleford  Road  and  walk 
in  the  yellow  glow  through  Deerbrook  the  village  near 
Birmingham.  It  is  a  community  given  over  to  flower- 
shows  and  water-parties:  picnickers  stroll  among  the 
wild  hyacinths  and  meadow  narcissus  to  where  children 
are  gathering  cowslips  and  come  back  with  wild-flowers 
past  the  corner-house,  the  home  of  Edward  Hope  who  had 
married  Hester  Ibbotson  instead  of  her  sister  Margaret 
whom  he  really  loved.  As  nothing  can  be  kept  a  secret  in 
Deerbrook,  this  Margaret  is  in  love  with  Philip  Enderby 
who,  she  thinks,  will  shortly  marry  a  Miss  Mary  Bruce. 
Facing  the  winds  in  the  uplands  effects  no  cure  for  Mar- 
garet. As  the  season  advances,  Harriet  Martineau  covers 
the  meadows  with  snow  and  on  the  frozen  river  glides 
Margaret  in  snow-boots  on  skates.  Falling  through  the 
thin  ice,  after  being  rescued,  she  hears  Edward  Hope  say 
"0  God!  My  Margaret."  These  words  are  passed  on 
to  Enderby  who  fears  the  situation.  Margaret  lives  in 
the  corner-house  and,  when  Philip  questions  her  love, 
tries  to  solace  herself  by  loving  the  little  child  born  to 
Hester  and  Edward.  At  length  poverty  pinches  the 
family  as  well  as  all  the  poor  people  of  Deerbrook. 
Edward  Hope,  a  good  surgeon,  had  been  accused  by 
Sir  William  Hunter— a  forecast  of  George  Eliot's  Bul- 
strode  in  Middlemarch — of  being  a  body-snatcher,  and 
the  corner-house  had  been  attacked  by  a  mob  which 
had  been  dispersed  by  an  illuminated  skeleton.  Har- 
riet Martineau  anticipates  Mrs.  Gaskell  in  the  dreadful 
picture  of  the  starving  community  that  resorts  to  rob- 
beries and  which  is  finally  stricken  with  the  plague, 
the  fever.  Deerbrook  in  the  shadow  is  seen  mak- 
ing coffins  by  candle-light.     Margaret  attends  the  sick, 


Miss  Mitford  and  Mrs.  Gaskell  293 

the  dying,  and  visits  the  graveyard  as  it  fills  up  with 
new-made  graves.  Edward  Hope  regains  his  good  repu- 
tation by  gallant  conduct  during  the  epidemic ;  and  Mar- 
garet Ibbotson  leaving  a  death-bed  scene  meets  Philip 
Enderby  who  gently  leads  her  to  the  marriage  altar.  The 
heroine,  knowing  that  Edward  and  Hester  are  prosperous 
and  that  all  whom  she  loved  are  in  sunshine,  feels  that 
she  can  leave  the  dear  old  country  village  of  Deerbrook, 
among  whose  hedge-rows  she  had  often  rambled,  to  come 
again  to  see  it  thrice  as  fair. 

This  modified  grief  slowly  passing  into  permanent  joy 
on  the  pages  of  Deerbrook  animates  Mrs.  Gaskell' s  The 
Moorland  Cottage  (1850).  Beneath  a  thorn-tree,  "where 
never  tumult  of  the  world  came  to  disturb  the  peace, 
and  the  quiet  of  whose  heights  was  never  broken  by  the 
loud  passionate  cries  of  men,"  sits  Maggie  Browne  gazing 
into  the  blue  air  above  the  summits  of  the  hills  and  at  the 
dark-brown  purple  streak  of  moor  where  a  yellow  gleam 
of  lights  reveals  a  pond.  Here  in  this  retreat  Maggie  is  as 
calm  an  object  as  the  white  speck  of  the  distant  sheep; 
and  it  is  to  this  spot  that  she  has  fled  as  a  refuge  from  her 
mother's  dwelling  near  Combehurst.  The  life  of  brown- 
haired,  dark-eyed  Maggie  in  the  Moorland  Cottage  had 
been  pathetic.  No  sympathy  had  ever  come  to  her  from  a 
cold-hearted  mother  and  a  selfish  brother  Edward.  The 
querulous  mother  believed  only  in  education  for  her  son 
and  even  disapproved  of  her  daughter's  admiration  for 
nature.  This  was  Maggie's  past;  and,  at  the  thorn-tree, 
she  is  pondering  over  saving  her  brother  Edward,  because 
Mr.  Buxton  objected  to  his  son  Frank's  marrying  the  sister 
of  a  forger.  If  she  would  give  up  Frank,  then  Mr.  Buxton 
would  not  prosecute  Edward,  who  then  could  begin  life 
anew  in  America.  The  novel  toward  the  end  is  melo- 
dramatic, for  Maggie  moves  from  the  thorn-tree  to  sacri- 
fice her  love  for  Frank  for  the  duty  of  accompanying 


294  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

scapegrace  Edward  to  the  new  life  to  be  constructed  be- 
yond the  Atlantic.  On  the  ship  a  fire  breaks  out.  Edward 
is  drowned,  but  she  is  rescued  by  Frank  who,  without  her 
knowing  it,  had  been  on  board  all  the  time.  Thus,  after 
much  sorrow  we  return  with  the  happy  lovers  to  pass  by 
the  lyke-gate  at  Combehurst  church,  to  cross  the  wooden 
bridge  over  the  brook  to  take  the  path  through  the  pasture 
and  the  field  of  purple  heather  from  which  we  emerge  to 
pass  down  hill  to  the  basin,  where  stands  the  cottage  in 
which  is  the  only  sorrow  still  remaining  for  Maggie — a 
mother  who  values  a  dead  son  more  than  a  thousand 
daughters. 

George  Eliot  was  inspired  by  Elizabeth  Gaskell's  idyllic 
story  to  construct  the  plot  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  (i860), 
the  threads  of  which  are  for  the  most  part  entirely  of  a 
different  color;  but  still  dark-haired  Maggie  Browne,  in 
the  clutches  of  her  hard-hearted  mother  and  brother 
Edward,  is  in  the  pathetic  plight  of  Maggie  Tulliver  who 
was  unappreciated  by  a  querulous  mother  and  stormed  at 
by  a  brother,  of  whom  Maggie  had  been  afraid  all  of  her 
life.  Befriended  only  by  a  father,  Maggie  at  last  was 
deprived  even  of  his  solicitude  by  the  Wakem  trouble 
which  engrossed  all  his  thoughts  and  eventually  caused  his 
death.  Maggie  Tulliver' s  troubles  are  set  off  by  a  back- 
ground of  the  beautiful  scenery  around  Dorlcote  Mill  along 
the  Floss,  the  flood-eddies  of  which  at  last  pulled  Maggie 
down  to  give  her  surcease  from  living  a  misunderstood, 
broken  life. 

Subdued  sorrow  with  an  idyllic  setting  such  as  is  por- 
trayed by  Harriet  Martineau  or  by  Mrs.  Gaskell  for  a 
moment  is  emphasized  at  the  end  of  Wuthering  Heights 
(1847).  Young  Cathy  the  second  in  the  hands  of  Heath- 
cliff,  who  forced  her  to  marry  his  milksop  son  Linton, 
enlists  our  sympathy  until  even  Emily  Bronte  must  needs 
have  Linton  Heathcliff  die  so  as  to  give  Cathy,  the  second, 


Miss  Mitford  and  George  Eliot         295 

happiness  by  presenting  her  with  the  love  of  Hareton 
Earnshaw  with  whom  she  walks  in  the  moonlight  dreaming 
of  the  ecstasy  to  be  on  New  Year's  day  when  the  Lintons 
and  the  Earnshaws  shall  be  at  one  with  heaven  and  them- 
selves.    Wuthering  Heights,  with  Cathy  the  first's  oak- 
paneled  bed  beside  the  lattice  near  the  firs,  will  be  shut  up 
forever;  for  the  troubles  of  the  House  of  Earnshaw  and  the 
House  of  Linton  are  over.     Mr.  Lockwood  and  Mrs.  Dean 
have  served  their  r61e  as  chorus  to  explain  the  fall  and  rise 
of  the  Earnshaws  and  the  Lintons.     The  old  order  has 
passed  away ;  and  happiness  for  the  Earnshaws  and  Lintons 
has  at  last  been  effected  for  the  lovers,  strolling  in  the 
moonlight,  who  are  going  down  to  live  at  Thrushcross 
Grange.     In  all  our  fiction  there  is  no  more  pleasing  sight 
than  this  idyllic  picture  emerging  from  the  shadows  at 
the  end  of  Emily  Bronte's  Wuthering  Heights;  and  a  simi- 
lar   idyllic    setting    closes  George  Eliot's  Middlemarch, 
(1871-72),  where  we  see  self-sacrificing  Mary  Garth  happy 
with  her  gentleman-farmer,  Fred  Vincy,  as  she  had  been 
on  that  day  in  her  youth  when  she  had  pledged  herself  to 
him  over  the  umbrella  ring.     Mary  had  always  believed 
as  her  father  Caleb,  in  patiently  awaiting  gifts  from  God, 
who  had  always  been  at  her  side  in  the  bitter  days  of  earn- 
ing her  wages  at  Stone  Court  in  the  service  of  old  Feather- 
stone,  and  who  had  prevented  her  from  putting  through 
the   sordid  deal  of  burning  Featherstone's  second  will 
which,  if  she  had  so  done,  she  well  knew  would  have  made 
the  man  she  loved,  Fred  Vincy,  richer  by  £10,000. 

What  George  Eliot  did  for  greater  groups  of  individuals, 
arranged  in  settings  of  rural  life,  made  it  possible  for 
Enoch  Arnold  Bennett  to  pass  from  the  analyzation  of  one 
man,  or  one  woman,  to  the  microscopical  sectioning  of  a 
whole  community  and  the  environment  thereof,  namely, 
the  atmosphere  of  the  Five  Towns  of  Hanbridge,  Bursley, 
Knype,  Longshaw,  and  Turnhill,  in  the  pottery  districts 


296  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

of  Staffordshire,  whose  people  we  feel  very  near  to  as  we 
sift  their  joys  and  sorrows,  their  hopes  and  aspirations, 
their  disappointments  and  failures.  In  Anna  of  the  Five 
Towns,  the  souls  of  Anna  and  William  crept  close  together 
by  means  of  the  strength  and  beauty  of  renunciation  and 
the  sustaining  power  of  memory.  The  love  of  money  on 
the  part  of  Anna's  father  tried  to  destroy  such  aesthetic 
natures  as  they  both  possessed,  but  William's  body  in  the 
shaft  and  Anna's  in  the  prison  of  a  loveless  marriage  are 
only  material  reminders  of  the  fact  that  their  souls  had 
constantly  communed  in  a  sphere  in  which  Anna's  miserly, 
tyrannical  father  had  been  balked  in  his  scheme  of  aes- 
thetic, spiritual  murder.  Bennett's  type-portraitures  are 
always  intensely  human,  buoyant  with  the  tumultuous 
emotions  of  life;  and,  often,  by  their  peaceful  ways  and 
simple  contentedness,  they  set  an  example  of  the  love  and 
friendship  of  community  life  which  is  an  ideal  for  all  to 
seek  and  accept.  And  the  touches,  such  as  those  closely 
binding  together  Miss  Mitford's  Our  Village,  Harriet 
Martineau's  Deerbrook,  Mrs.  Gaskell's  The  Moorland 
Cottage  and  Cranford,  George  Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  Mill  on 
the  Floss,  Silas  Marner,  and  Middlemarch,  and  Enoch 
Arnold  Bennett's  Anna  of  the  Five  Towns  and  The  Old 
Wives1  Tale,  have  all  clearly  been  put  together  again  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  by  Mrs.  Mary  Wilkins  Freeman's 
sketches  of  rural  New  England. 


CHAPTER  X 

A.     Glance     at     E-nglisH     Fiction     from     Miss 
Mitford  to  CKarles  DicKens 

SOME  of  the  novels  of  John  Gait  are  The  Ayrshire 
Legatees  (1820);  The  Annals  of  the  Parish  (182 1); 
The  Steamboat  (1822);  The  Provost  (1822);  Sir 
Andrew  Wylie  (1822);  The  Entail  (1823);  Ringan  Gilhaize 
(1823) ;  and  Lawrie  Todd;  or,  the  Settlers  in  the  Woods  (1832). 
The  first  novel,  a  series  of  letters  written  by  the  members 
of  a  Scotch  family  who  travel  to  London  to  obtain  a  legacy, 
in  form  is  a  direct  imitation  of  Smollett's  Humphry  Clinker; 
and  the  second  is  somewhat  of  a  local  history  of  Scotland 
in  the  time  of  George  III  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  Scotch 
Dr.  Primrose— the  Reverend  Micah  Balwhidder,  who 
writes  in  the  king's  English,  plentifully  sprinkled  with  good 
pure  Ayrshire  dialect.  We  could  praise  Gait's  description 
of  the  death  of  poor  daft  Meg  Gaffaw,  if  she  were  not 
recognized  as  a  shaving  of  that  figure  which  Scott  had 
already  whittled  into  the  shape  of  Madge  Wildfire.  The 
Provost  is  another  Annals  of  the  Parish  giving  glimpses  of 
Scotch  life  down  past  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo. 
One  scene  among  the  sketches  is  that  of  the  execution  of 
Jeanie,  who  had  murdered  her  own  babe.  Her  brother 
Willie  ascends  the  scaffold  to  be  a  solace  during  her  last 
moments.  It  is  plainly  suggestive  of  what  would  have 
happened  to  Effie  Deans,  if  Jeanie,  her  sister,  had  not  won 
a  pardon  from   Queen   Caroline.     Ringan  Gilhaize,  the 

297 


298  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

attempt  of  Gait,  a  third-rate  artist,  to  get  on  second-rate 
ground  to  clutch  Scott's  coat-tails,  hoping  thus  to  be 
dragged  on  to  first-rate  soil,  was  a  grievous  failure. 

In  The  Entail  Gait  succeeded  in  getting  one  foot  over 
the  line  into  the  great  Sir  Walter's  territory.  Scott 
enjoyed  this  novel,  and  it  is  said  that  Byron  read  it  three 
times;  and  certainly  Claud  Walkinshaw  bending  all  his 
energies  as  a  peddler,  then  as  a  merchant,  to  regain  his 
father's  estate,  is  a  strong  piece  of  characterization  as  well 
as  his  "  bairnswoman "  Maudge,  who  never  received  any 
help  and  died  in  poverty.  Possibly  the  attributes  of 
Cuddie  Headrigg  in  Scott's  Old  Mortality  helped  Gait  to 
create  Maudge.  To  make  a  study  of  The  Entail  is  to 
analyze  why  a  man  marries  his  cousin,  why  a  man  sacri- 
fices his  sons — to  get  lands  and  money.  It  is  indeed  a 
sordid  study  of  disinheriting  and  entailing  which  arc 
schemes  whereby  to  get  more  of  this  world's  goods.  Per- 
haps the  most  tragical  episode  in  the  novel  is  the  sea- 
storm  in  which  George  meets  his  death;  and  the  most 
humorous  episode  that  of  the  marriage  of  the  mentally 
deficient  Walter  to  Betty  Bodle.  After  the  "sicker  knot" 
has  been  tied  under  a  tree  near  the  manse,  we  march  to  the 
barn  to  spend  the  greater  part  of  the  night  in  celebrating 
the  Scotch  wedding.  We  see  the  famous  Leddy  Grippy, 
the  beautiful  Isabella  of  nobility,  the  aged  Lady  of  Plee- 
lands,  and  the  whinstone-minded  Claud,  gathered  together 
to  sanction  all  the  foolish  revelry  which  is  capped  in  non- 
sense by  the  remarks  of  the  bride,  "Are  ye  fou'  already, 
Watty  Walkinshaw?  If  ye  mudge  out  o'  that  seat  again 
this  night,  I'll  mak'  you  as  sick  o'  pies  and  puddings  as 
ever  a  dog  was  o'  het  kail." 

Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hamilton  in  The  Cottagers  of  Glenburnie 
(1808)  and  John  Gait  in  his  novels  helped  establish  what 
William  Ernest  Henley  in  1895  termed  "the  kailyard 
school."     John  Gibson  Lockhart  wrote  Valerius  (1821), 


Lockhart's  "Adam  Blair"  299 

which  has  been  called  a  weak  Roman  Old  Mortality,  and 
Adam  Blair  (1822)  which  shows  the  scenic  power  of  Scott 
when  Lockhart  describes  Loch-Fine.  Lockhart  nowhere 
presses  into  service  parochial  dialect.  The  whole  novel 
is  a  casting  forward  to  a  variation  of  J.  M.  Barrie's  The 
Little  Minister  (1891)  in  which  there  is  another  kind  of 
Babbie  who  does  not  love  a  big  minister  enough  to  keep 
from  ruining  him.  Black-eyed  Charlotte  Bell  (Mrs. 
Campbell),  similar  to  Meredith's  Diana  of  the  Crossways, 
who,  however,  does  not  emerge  from  confronting  the 
changes  of  the  various  stages  of  her  marital  hell  ready  for 
heaven,  comes  to  the  manse  of  Cross-Meikle  to  fascinate 
its  inmate,  the  widower  Adam  Blair.  After  sensationally 
plunging  into  the  river  to  save  Adam  Blair  and  his  daugh- 
ter from  drowning,  she  runs  away  to  answer  the  summons 
of  her  incompatible,  brutal  husband  whose  castle  is  on  the 
shore  of  Loch-Fine.  It  is  life  for  a  life,  so  the  Reverend 
Mr.  Blair  follows  his  pale  green  satin-dressed  Sataness  to 
the  scene  of  her  imprisonment  and  falls  on  the  first  night 
of  their  meeting  into  the  web  of  her  powerful  seductive 
charms.  The  novel  has  been  exceedingly  well  done  and 
should  be  read  oftener  nowadays.  There  is  symbolic  work 
in  it  such  as  where  Charlotte  tries  to  phrase  her  feelings  in 
making  the  black  mere,  into  which  she  had  been  throwing 
stones,  represent  the  depths  of  calmness  that  she  had 
ruffled  and  polluted ;  and  symbolism  is  not  only  one  of  the 
last  phases  of  our  fiction,  but  is  one  of  the  most  difficult 
to  create  and  pass  over  to  the  full  understanding  of  readers. 
Charlotte  conveniently  dies  of  the  fever  she  contracted 
from  nursing  her  fallen  lover;  but  Adam  is  saved  by  the 
author  from  delirium  to  be  rehabilitated  not,  however, 
until  after  a  scene  of  degradation  before  the  General 
Assembly  in  Glasgow  and  after  ten  years  of  remorse  and 
misery  have  been  meted  out  to  him  with  the  members  of 
his  former  kirk  as  daily  witnesses. 


300  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

In  1822  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Scottish  Life  by  John  Wil- 
son ("  Christopher  North  ")  was  published ;  and,  in  1823,  ap- 
peared his  The  Trials  of  Margaret  Lindsay,  a  tale  of  "piety, 
submission,  and  active  exertion,"  which  caused  Letitia 
Landon's  Emily  Arundel  to  weep  more  copiously  than  was 
her  wont.  The  Foresters  came  out  in  1825.  In  some  of 
his  stories  Wilson  possessed  the  power  of  the  gruesome  as 
in  that  one  that  has  been  carried  by  the  present  writer 
through  the  tract  of  many  years.  It  is  A  Tale  of  Expi- 
ation, that  short  barbaric  narrative  which  relates  how  a 
father  ruined  and  murdered  his  son's  sweetheart.  David 
Macbeth  Moir,  the  "Delta"  of  Blackwood's  Magazine,  in 
Mansie  Wauch  (1828)  presents  the  biography  of  a  Dal- 
keith tailor.  Mrs.  Margaret  Oliphant  wrote  Margaret 
Maitland  (1849),  which  the  great  Jeffrey  praised  and  com- 
pared to  Gait's  Annals  of  the  Parish.  The  fisher-folk  of 
Scotland  stalk  about  in  Charles  Reade's  Christie  Johnstone 
(1853).  Then  within  the  next  fifteen  years  were  pub- 
lished the  fine  studies  of  Scotch  life  in  George  Mac- 
donald's  David  Elginbrod  (1863),  Alec  Forbes  of  Tlowglen 
(1865),  and  Robert  Falconer  (1868).  Macdonald  later 
added  to  the  series  Malcolm  (1875),  Marquis  of  Lossie 
(1877),  Sir  Gibbie  (1879),  and  Donal  Grant  (1883),  con- 
taining masterly  delineations  of  Scottish  character. 

At  this  point  in  the  production  of  kailyard  material,  we 
can  conveniently  pass  from  the  Aberdeenshire  of  George 
Macdonald's  to  northern  Scotland  and  the  Hebrides  de- 
picted in  the  novels  of  William  Black,  and  from  thence 
to  Fifeshire  to  study  the  fiction  of  David  Storran 
Meldrum.  J.  M.  Barrie  entered  this  field  in  1888  with 
the  delightful  Auld  Licht  Idylls.  Then  from  Barrie's 
Kirriemuir  there  was  the  shift  to  Drumtochty  to  the 
pleasurable  Beside  the  Bonnie  Briar  Bush  (1894)  °f  Dr. 
John  Watson's,  and  to  Gait's  Ayrshire  that  causes  us 
to  stand  aghast  at  its  hard  and  bitter  peasant  life  in 


The  Kailyard  School  301 

The  House  with  the  Green  Shutters  (1901),  which  was 
written  by  George  Douglas  Brown  in  a  reactionary  spirit 
strong  to  demolish  any  happiness  that  existed  in  any 
kailyard.  S.  R.  Crockett,  whom  death  not  long  ago 
called  from  his  labors  in  fiction,  should  not  be  forgotten, 
for  he  has  entertained  us  for  many  years  by  his  de- 
lightful stories,  the  scenes  of  which  are  generally  placed 
in  Galloway.  It  is  sincerely  to  be  regretted  that  J.  M. 
Barrie  since  1900  has  felt  the  call  of  the  drama  rather  than 
the  tug  of  the  heather.  Our  fiction  has  lost  much  by 
reason  of  his  being  no  longer  susceptible  to  Heimatkunst 
or  "Home  was  home  then,  happy  for  the  child. "  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  in  Kidnapped  and  The  Master  of  Ballant- 
rae,  caught  the  spirit  of  cold  and  hot  kail;  but  never  to 
convey  such  does  he  technically  press  to  breaking  a  dialect 
that  was  not  made  for  such  falsity.  He  is  not  a  kailyarder 
because  his  work  is  not  parochial,  but  is  national.  Steven- 
son only  of  all  the  Scotch  novelists  has  put  on  the  histori- 
cal, romantic  garb  dropped  by  Scott  in  1832;  but  a  pigmy 
is  a  dwarf,  though  wrapped  in  a  giant's  robe. 

Pierce  Egan's  Life  in  London;  or  the  Day  and  Night 
Scenes  of  Jerry  Hawthorn,  Esq.  (1821)  and  his  Finish  to 
the  Adventures  of  Tom,  Jerry,  and  Logic,  in  their  Pursuits 
through  Life  in  and  out  of  London  (1828)  in  substance  matter, 
form,  diction  sprinkled  with  cockney  English,  and  in 
manner  of  being  published  in  monthly  parts,  formed  the 
prototype  of  Dickens's  Pickwick  Papers.  In  1824  the 
first  part  of  Theodore  Hook's  Sayings  and  Doings  was 
published  which,  when  completed  between  1826  and 
1829,  was  to  have  a  strong  influence  on  Charles  Dickens. 

Mrs.  Catherine  Gore's  first  novel  Theresa  Marchmont,  or 
the  Maid  of  Honour  appeared  in  1824  to  be  followed  by  a 
host  of  her  other  pieces  of  fiction  dealing  with  fashionable 
life.  Cecil,  or  the  Adventures  of  a  Coxcomb  (1841)  was 
composed  as  an  antidote  to  the  poison  in  Disraeli's  Vivian 


302  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


Grey  and  Bulwer's  Falkland;  and  The  Banker 's  Wife;  or 
Court  and  City  (1843)  holds  up  Mr.  Hamlyn  the  banker 
as  an  awful  example  of  what  awaits  those  who  secretly 
squander  the  hard-earned  money  that  friends  have  put 
into  their  safe-keeping.  When  the  long-deferred  crash 
comes,  the  wounded,  dying  banker  kisses  his  son  for  the 
first  time  since  childhood,  realizing  that  the  loss  of  money 
has  brought  about  the  birth  of  love  not  only  to  himself 
but  to  all  the  members  of  his  family.  Colonel  Hamilton, 
who  had  made  his  fortune  in  India  to  lose  the  major  part 
of  it  by  placing  it  in  the  Hamlyn  bank,  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  the  novel  is  a  lovable  character  reminding 
us  of  Colonel  Newcome  who  was  soon  to  be  created  by 
Thackeray. 

Passing  away  from  the  woman  who  makes  the  money- 
dealer  stand  out  in  English  fiction,  we  come  to  another 
second-rate  novelist,  Anna  Eliza  Bray,  who,  in  1825, 
began  to  write  novels  in  imitation  of  her  master  Sir 
Walter  Scott.  She  went  about  with  notebook  in  hand 
making  memoranda  pertaining  to  ancient  ruins.  Like 
Charles  Reade  she  believed  in  accuracy  of  data,  and  she 
believed  that  one  should  visit  the  territory  which  was 
to  be  the  background.  Her  novels  fill  a  long  shelf,  but  if 
they  were  compressed  to  their  real  worth  they  would  rise 
no  higher  than  a  hassock  on  which  the  great  Sir  Walter 
might  rest  his  lame  foot.  One  of  them  The  Protestant 
(1828)  caught  the  favor  of  the  public  by  reason  of  the 
attitude  of  the  English  people  toward  Catholic  emanci- 
pation; but  Mrs.  Bray  had  written  no  purpose  novel  to 
help  in  any  religious  controversy.  The  novel  was  simply 
a  study  of  the  fires  at  Smithfield  that  Queen  Mary  kept 
fanning  during  the  five-year  nightmare  that  she  gave 
England.  The  Talba,  or  Moor  of  Portugal  is  better;  but 
Trelawny  of  Trelawne;  or  the  Prophecy:  a  Legend  of  Cornwall, 
dealing  with  the  rebellion  of  Monmouth,  is  perhaps  the 


The  Banims'  "O'Hara  Tales"  303 

best,  since  Cornwall  was  the  place  which  she  knew  most 
about  because  of  her  exceedingly  painstaking  research 
into  the  legends  thereof. 

Ireland  again  thrust  itself  into  English  fiction  in  John 
Banim  and  Michael  Banim's  Tales  by  the  O'Hara  Family 
(1825-27).  In  the  Banim  fiction  brotherly  love  can  pass 
into  jealousy,  into  hate,  into  apostasy,  into  faith  in  the 
world,  and  into  the  recognition  that  the  greatest  thing 
in  it  is  love.  When  the  Banims  wish  it  their  peasants  live 
in  an  Arcadia  that  makes  for  primeval  integrity,  for 
loyalty  to  friend  and  foe,  and  for  learning  that  duty  must 
be  done  at  any  cost.  Their  Irishmen  in  the  midst  of 
poverty  and  suffering  are  frolicsome  and  witty.  It  is  a 
wonder  that  these  men  could  ever  smile,  could  ever  be  pure 
and  sweet  in  their  relations  with  one  another,  or  possess 
any  triumphant  hope  for  themselves  or  for  their  country, 
when  we  consider  them  as  victims  of  the  cruel  laws  extant 
everywhere  on  the  island.  The  Banim  Celt  seems  seldom 
to  die  in  his  bed.  He  was  a  fighter  but  somehow  or  other 
his  children,  some  of  them,  appear  to  the  reader  as  if  they 
were  going  to  die  in  their  beds.  At  times  it  is  felt  that  the 
Celt  should  die  out  entirely  since  futile  is  the  struggle  of 
each  generation  which  ended  in  transportation  or  death. 
It  seems  as  if  all  these  generous,  warm-hearted  Irishmen 
were  fighting  battles  not  for  themselves  but  for  others. 
Disaster  was  always  the  reward  for  generosity.  About 
the  only  thing  that  they  do  receive  is  the  beauty  of  renun- 
ciation. This  is  the  only  silver  lining  to  the  cloud  of 
Banim  pathos  that  the  onlooker  can  see. 

Let  us  turn  to  Michael  Banim's  The  Croppy  a  story  of 
the  rebellion  of  1 798  which  was  an  attempt  to  establish  an 
Irish  republic.  The  plot  manoeuvres  into  shape  by  means 
of  poetic  prose  that  depicts  Irish  landscape  at  sunset. 
Eliza  Hartley,  heiress  of  Hartley  court,  is  musing  aloud 
with  Nanny  the  knitter,  a  go-between  for  all  members 


304  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

of  the  love-making  community,  listening  with  all  the  solid- 
ity of  the  rotundity  of  her  quaint  figure.  The  dramatis 
personae  are  then  revealed.  Harry  Talbot  has  loved 
Eliza  from  childhood.  Sir  William  Judkin,  a  fascinating 
stranger,  bribes  Nanny  to  help  in  his  suit  to  Eliza. 
This  Judkin  is  the  nephew  of  a  baronet,  whose  lands  he 
had  inherited.  He  had  been  educated  in  foreign  parts 
as  a  gentleman.  The  father  of  Eliza  prefers  Harry  Tal- 
bot, but  the  girl  is  fascinated  by  the  stranger.  There 
appears  on  the  scene  Belinda  St.  John,  Eliza's  dearest 
school  friend,  who  is  tall,  dark,  and  beautiful,  even  in 
the  wreck  of  her  former  self,  as  she  tells  the  story  of  her 
ruin  to  Eliza.  Then  we  pass  from  this  apparently  mad 
woman  Belinda  to  the  military  review  and  to  the  out- 
break on  account  of  the  soldiers'  abuse.  Lands  are  de- 
vastated, homes  are  burned,  prisoners  are  tortured  for 
information  in  the  effort  to  quell  the  rebellion.  Then 
comes  the  scene  where  Belinda  saves  Sir  William,  who  had 
murdered  her  child  and  married  Eliza  Hartley  only  to 
desert  her.  Talbot  saves  Eliza's  father  and  rescues  Eliza 
from  the  burning  prison.  Sir  William,  in  an  encounter, 
falls  from  his  horse,  is  crushed,  and  is  rescued  again  by 
Belinda  to  die  in  the  churchyard  of  Dunbrody  Abbey  so 
that  Nemesis  can  be  uniquely  appeased.  A  moonlight 
scene  ensues  in  which  Eliza  is  present  in  order  to  gaze  upon 
Sir  William,  whose  head  is  resting  on  the  cofhn  of  the  child 
he  had  murdered,  and  whose  eyes  are  glazing  as  he  sees 
before  him  for  the  last  time  the  two  women  he  had  wronged. 
There  is  another  girl  in  the  plot  who  is  a  wonderful  deline- 
ation of  the  peasant  type.  But  the  sorrows  of  Kitty,  the 
daughter  of  Shawn-a-Gow  the  smith,  are  only  martial. 

There  is  great  scenic  power  in  one  place  in  the  tale 
where  the  half-savage  Shawn-a-Gow  in  the  fire  of  primitive 
passions  is  unconsciously  gazing  upon  the  silhouetted  form 
of  his  beloved  son  who,  by  the  light  of  the  burning  village, 


Michael  Banim's  "The  Croppy"        305 

is  dangled  up  and  down  in  a  mad  dance  from  ground  to  limb 
of  tree — a  victim  of  torture  to  confess  conspiracy.  Later, 
with  the  corpse  of  this  idolized  son  in  his  arms  he  says, 

In  the  darkness  o'  the  night  I  swore  to  burn  for  burnin'  done 
on  me.  In  the  light  o'  mornin'  I  swear  over  again.  By  the 
sowl  o'  that  boy  that  was  as  harmless  an'  as  innocent  as  when 
he  smiled  from  his  mother's  breast.  Him  that  is  now  in 
Heaven  listening  to  my  oath,  I'll  have  blood  for  his  blood — an' 
that  in  plenty.     Ay,  Tom !  in  plenty. 

On  the  hillside,  as  he  had  watched  the  roof  of  his  home 
fall  in,  this  tortured  pikeman  had  said, 

By  the  ashes  o'  my  cabin  and  I  stanin'  a  houseless  beggar 
on  the  hillside  lookin'  at  it ! — While  I  can  get  an  Orangeman's 
house  to  take  the  blaze  and  a  wisp  to  kindle  the  blaze  up  I'll 
burn  ten  houses  for  that  one. 

As  a  comic  relief  action  for  all  this  tragedy  Michael  Banim 
has  nothing  better  to  offer  the  reader  than  Nanny  the 
knitter  inside  the  chest,  which  the  robbers  had  carried  off 
on  a  perilous  journey  to  open  and  find  all  the  Hartley 
wealth.     All  the  treasure  that  they  got  was  Nanny. 

The  question  naturally  arises:  What  caused  all  this 
internecine  warfare  and  misery?  Some  say  it  was  brought 
about  by  Pitt.  O'Connell  says,  "It  was  brought  about 
by  the  most  base,  open,  and  profligate  corruption  that  ever 
stained  the  annals  of  any  country."  According  to  Ban- 
im's introductory  chapter  in  The  Croppy,  the  origin  of  the 
civil  strife  dates  back  to  1777  when  England  had  sent  all 
her  soldiers  to  fight  against  the  American  Colonies.  There 
was  no  army  in  Ireland  and,  when  there  seemed  to  be 
danger  of  a  French  invasion,  Irish  regiments  were  mustered 
into  service.  The  Irish  were  proud  of  their  soldiery  and  it 
was  permitted  to  remain  after  the  French  war  scare  died 
away.     In  1782  Ireland  had  an  independent  parliament 


3o6  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  free  trade.  After  the  war  was  over  in  America, 
England  began  a  despotic  course  of  action  suppressing 
the  volunteers.  Ireland  tried  to  work  out  her  salvation 
by  means  of  political  clubs  and  secret  societies,  and  as  the 
Catholics  had  been  strong  supporters  of  the  volunteer 
movement,  and  by  nature  of  their  religion  could  not  belong 
to  secret  societies,  the  island  was  rent  in  twain,  animosity 
of  race  and  creed  being  rampant  everywhere.  Thus  their 
rebellion  of  1 798  was  ushered  in  which  streaked  with  blood 
not  only  Banim's  The  Croppy,  but  Lady  Morgan's  The 
O'Briens  and  0'  Flaherty s  (1827),  with  which  we  have 
already  familiarized  ourselves.  There  are  few  Irishmen  to- 
day who  have  not  at  some  time  or  other  read  John  Banim's 
The  Peep  0'  Day:  or  John  Doe  and  The  Nowlans,  and  Michael 
Banim's  Father  Connell  and  Crohoore  of  the  Billhook. 

Another  Irish  fiction  writer  who  was  acquainted  with  the 
Banim  fiction  was  Gerald  Griffin  whose  chief  productions 
are:  Tales  of  the  Munster  Festivals  (1827);  The  Collegi- 
ans (1829);  The  Invasion  (1832);  Tales  of  My  Neighbor- 
hood (1835) ;  Duke  of  Monmouth  (1836) ;  and  Talis  Qualis, 
or  Tales  of  the  Juryroom  (1842).  If  a  man  has  read  Suil 
Dhuv,  the  Coiner  and  The  Hand  and  Word,  which  power- 
fully portrays  the  horrible  murders  committed  by  the 
terrible  Yamon  Dhu,  and  The  Collegians;  or,  Colleen 
Bawn,  he  has  a  full  grasp  of  the  Griffin  fiction.  The 
Collegians  has  been  praised  beyond  what  it  deserves  per- 
haps on  account  of  Dion  Boucicault's  dramatization  of  it. 
For  the  most  part  the  novel  is  nothing  but  rank  melo- 
drama in  which  we  see  Hardress  working  out  murder  as 
the  solution  of  a  situation  that  is  ages  old.  When  a 
college  man  like  Hardress  Cregan  has  kept  from  the  world 
the  secret  of  his  marriage  to  a  beautiful  peasant  girl,  and  a 
chance  comes  of  his  securing  the  beautiful,  cultured  Anne 
Chute  of  the  moneyed  class,  and  he  is  too  mean  to  lift  his 
wife  up  to  his  intellectual  level,  and  is  so  selfish  that  he 


Gerald  Griffin's  "Collegians"  307 

thinks  that  she  will  continually  drag  him  down  and  keep 
him  away  from  money  and  what  he  conceives  to  be  his 
true  social  status,  and  the  wife  seems  healthy  and  refuses 
to  die,  there  is  only  one  way  out  of  the  tangle  and  that  is 
delivering  the  precious  jewel  of  his  soul  into  the  keeping  of 
the  common  enemy  of  mankind.  Hardress  decides  that 
girl  number  one  must  be  put  out  of  the  way,  and  not  hay- 
ing the  heart  to  do  it  himself  he  employs  an  agent.  When 
Hardress  is  brought  to  bay  by  the  baying  of  the  hounds 
which  had  come  upon  the  shattered  corpse  of  his  Eily,  the 
reader  shudders.  Hardress  breaks  into  the  crowd,  gath- 
ered around  the  body  of  his  murdered  wife,  crying  out  in 
the  frenzy  of  his  guilt, 

Keep  off  the  dogs!  They  will  tear  her  if  ye  let  them  pass! 
Good  sir,  will  you  suffer  the  dogs  to  tear  her?  I  had  rather  be 
torn  myself  than  look  upon  such  a  sight.  ...  Do  you  hear 
them  now?  Do  you  hear  that  yell  for  blood?  .  .  .  Who  put 
the  hounds  upon  that  horrid  scent — that  false  scent?  I  am 
going  mad,  I  think.  I  say,  sir,  do  you  hear  that  yelling  now? 
...  I  tell  you  there  is.  If  this  ground  should  open  before 
me,  and  I  should  hear  the  hounds  of  Satan  yelling  upward 
from  the  deep,  it  could  not  freeze  me  with  a  greater  fear. 

Thus,  Griffin  probes  criminal  conscience  touching  it  to  the 
quick  as  Francis  J.  Thompson  in  his  poem  wherein  a 
sinner  cries  out  in  terror  as  he  is  being  chased  down  by 
the  Hound  of  Heaven. 

Another  novelist  who  knew  better  than  the  Banim 
brothers  or  Grifnn  the  virtues  and  the  faults  of  the  Irish- 
men of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  William 
Carle  ton.  It  made  no  difference  to  him  whether  an  Irish- 
man was  a  saint  or  a  fool  in  the  woeful  environment  that 
was  his.  Carleton  favored  nobody  in  his  delineations. 
His  pen  was  as  true  as  the  touch  of  Ithuriel's  spear;  and 
thus,  when  touched,  Catholics,  Orangemen,  agents,  land- 


308  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

lords,  ribbonmen,  rapparees,  a  paddy  go-easy,  a  mid- wife, 
and  a  tithe  proctor,  are  revealed  in  the  truest  traits  of  their 
race.  In  1828,  in  The  Christian  Examiner,  appeared  The 
Pilgrimage  to  Lough  Derg.  In  the  following  year  Father 
Butler  and  The  Lough  Derg  Pilgrim  found  their  way  into  a 
volume.  Then  was  published  his  greatest  fiction  such  as 
Traits  arid  Stories  of  the  Irish  Peasantry  (1830),  (second 
series  three  years  later);  Tales  of  Ireland  (1834);  Fardo- 
rougha the  Miser  (1837-38);  Valentine  McClutchy  (1845); 
Parra  Sasthia,  or  the  History  of  Paddy  Go-Easy  and  his  Wife 
Nancy  (1845) ;  The  Black  Prophet  (1847) ;  The  Emigrants  of 
Ahadarra  (1847);  The  Tithe  Proctor  (1849);  and  Willy 
Reilly  (1855).  Of  these  the  greatest  in  my  opinion  are 
Fardorougha  the  Miser,  showing  the  great  struggle  be- 
tween paternal  love  and  the  love  of  money,  and  Valentine 
McClutchy,  which  is  the  most  realistic  picture  of  the  Irish 
people  suffering  from  the  oppressive  landlaws  and  Orange 
conservatism  that  our  fiction  possesses.  This  novel  is 
perhaps  better  than  Fardorougha. 

Carleton  was  well  acquainted  with  hard-hearted  land- 
lords and  agents,  with  criminally  negligent  absentees,  and 
with  armed  civilians  whose  gunshots  were  still  ringing  a 
tocsin  in  his  ears.  Carleton  knew  what  his  country  had 
been  from  the  time  of  Cromwell's  siege  of  Drogheda. 
He  knew  the  penal  code  provisions  that  had  come  up 
out  of  the  laws  of  the  seventeenth  century  which  accord- 
ing to  Burke  had  reduced  the  Catholics  to  a  miserable 
population  without  property,  without  estimation,  with- 
out education.  As  late  as  1829  Catholics  were  excluded 
from  parliament,  the  magistracy,  corporations,  the  uni- 
versity, the  bar,  from  the  right  of  voting  at  parliament 
elections,  from  holding  office,  and  from  being  school- 
masters or  tutors.  Carleton  knew  that  one  half  of  the 
Irish  nation  was  composed  of  Gibeonites  and  that  the 
other    half    had    all    the    franchises,    all    the   property, 


Carleton's  "Valentine  McClutchy"      309 

and  all  the  education,  and  that  the  English  in  their 
attitude  toward  the  Irish  were  almost  as  bitter  as 
they  had  been  in  the  days  of  Cromwell.  The  penal  laws 
extant  tended  to  support  Carleton's  hypothesis.  Carle- 
ton  would  show  in  his  fiction  that  the  Irish  as  the  English 
lived  first  for  religion;  secondly,  for  country;  and  thirdly, 
for  family;  and  that  opposition  on  these  points  made  the 
Irish  stand  all  the  more  for  them. 

Rightly  to  understand  Valentine  McClutchy  the  above 
historical  facts  must  be  kept  in  mind.  In  the  plot  the 
dark,  sallow,  hook-nosed,  knock-kneed  agent  McClutchy 
who  is  an  illegitimate  and  the  father  of  a  degenerate  son, 
together  with  Solomon  McShine,  or  McSlime,  who  shines 
in  all  that  is  illegally  legal,  and  Lord  Cumber  the  absentee, 
form  the  trio  that  move  in  deviltry  against  the  benevolent 
Bryan  O'Laughlin,  his  daughter  Mary,  and  her  promised 
husband  Francis  Harman.  Val  had  desired  that  Mary 
should  become  the  wife  of  his  degenerate  son,  and  when 
this  proposal  is  persistently  refused  by  O'Laughlin,  the 
vulture  hunts  for  carrion.  First  of  all  he  ruins  O'Laugh- 
lin's  business.  Then  he  manages  it  so  that  his  degenerate 
son  is  secreted  in  Mary's  bedchamber  by  which  act  he 
causes  Francis  Harman  to  desert  her.  The  brothers  of 
Mary  in  an  oath  of  blood  become  self-appointed  avengers 
to  destroy  Val's  confederates.  Val  in  the  novel  grows 
in  colossal  villainy,  evicting  the  dying  from  their  homes, 
destroying  more  than  a  score  of  cabins  belonging  to  those 
who  had  dared  vote  for  an  unacceptable  candidate,  until 
the  earth  groans  for  his  removal  when  armed  civilians 
present  themselves  at  the  door  of  the  0' Regan  family. 
In  the  process  of  the  eviction  father  and  child  are  killed 
and  the  mother  is  turned  into  a  maniac.  It  is  for  such  a 
crime  as  this  that  the  black  soul  of  Val  meets  its  doom. 

The   Emigrants    of  Ahadarra    shows    the    beauty    of 
loyalty,    patience,    love,    and   patriotism   of   those   who 


310  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

suffer  eviction  and  wrongs.  Here  as  everywhere  Carleton 
is  sympathetic  toward  those  who  have  suffered  injustice. 
After  the  eviction,  the  old  grandfather  over  his  wife's 
grave  sobs  forth  a  beautiful  bit  of  Celtic  pathos : 

I  see  her  and  I  think  I  hear  her  voice  on  the  top  of  Lisbane 
singing  sweetly  across  the  valley  of  Mountain  Wathur  as  I 
often  did;  there  on  the  hillside  is  the  roofless  house  where 
she  was  born  and  there's  not  a  field  or  hill  that  her  feet  did  not 
make  holy  ground  to  me.  Would  you  take  the  old  grand- 
father away  from  them  that  wait  for  him  at  Carndhu  where 
they  sleep?  Carndhu's  a  holy  churchyard.  Ay,  Carndhu's 
holy  ground  and  'tis  there  that  I  must  sleep. 

Pathos  is  the  dominant  feature  of  Carleton's  fiction; 
humor  as  in  the  Banim  and  Griffin  fiction  we  seldom  have. 
The  Tithe  Proctor  is  greed  creeping  from  poverty  to  broad- 
cloth to  top-boots  to  vaulting  into  the  saddle  and  falling 
on  the  other  side.  The  background  of  the  story  is  the 
Tithe  imposts  and  the  Tithe  Rebellion  taking  the  reader 
back  to  the  years  1808  to  1832.  Willy  Reilly,  which  has 
been  generally  regarded  as  his  masterpiece  since  1855,  *s 
sensational  melodrama  of  the  worst  kind.  Willy  a 
Catholic,  thought  well  of  by  every  Protestant,  is  trans- 
ported for  seven  years  because,  forsooth,  he  has  a  rival 
on  the  order  of  McClutchy.  Willy's  sweetheart's  reason 
is  dethroned  and  Willy's  return  fails  not  to  restore  it. 
Carleton  like  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  the  dramatist,  can  not 
keep  from  breaking  into  melodrama.  Henry  Arthur 
Jones,  however,  at  times  could  emerge  from  it,  but  Car- 
leton never  could;  and  so  at  the  close  of  his  career  in 
fiction,  we  are  not  surprised  when  at  the  conclusion  of 
Willy  Reilly  the  hangman  says  to  Whitecraft  the  coward, 
"Yes,  I  hang  you  with  the  white  flag  of  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant's pardon  for  you  wavin'  in  the  distance.  And 
listen  again,  remember  Willy  Reilly.1' 


Disraeli:  The  Political  Novel  311 

In  the  Banim-Griffin-Carleton  fiction  we  are  always  in- 
clined to  take  the  Celt  seriously  rather  than  humorously 
and  he  was  not  made  a  laughingstock  until  Samuel  Lover 
and  Charles  Lever  falsely  caricatured  him  in  their  novels 
of  the  thirties  and  forties.  That  Thackeray  should  have 
caricatured  Lever  in  Phil  Fogarty  shows  the  attitude  of  a 
master  novelist  toward  the  creator  of  such  an  overdrawn 
rollicking  Irish  dragoon  as  Charles  O'Malley.  While  the 
Banim  brothers  had  been  busy  with  The  O'Hara  Tales, 
Horace  Smith  had  written  Brambletye  House  (1826),  G. 
Robert  Gleig  had  written  The  Subaltern  (1826),  and  in  that 
year  had  been  published  Sir  John  Chiverton  by  William 
Harrison  Ainsworth  who  had  been  helped  in  his  composi- 
tion by  John  Aston.  When  Bulwer's  Paul  Clifford  (1830) 
and  Eugene  Aram  (1832)  were  published,  Ainsworth  was 
at  once  influenced  by  romance  exploiting  the  criminal, 
and  straightway  were  published  Rookwood  (1834)  and  Jack 
Sheppard  (1839).  And  when  Bulwer  turned  into  the 
field  of  the  historical  novel,  Ainsworth  followed  him  with 
Crichton  (1837),  The  Tower  of  London  (1840),  Guy  Fawkes 
(1841),  Windsor  Castle  (1843),  and  Tower  Hill  (1871). 
Ainsworth  in  his  historical  novels  was  always  spacing  for 
place  and  not  for  the  figures  that  were  in  and  around  the 
place.  If  his  pictures  only  possessed  less  canvas  and  more 
characterization,  he  would  not  be  rated  to-day  as  twice  the 
inferior  of  Bulwer. 

The  English  political  novel  re-shaped  itself  in  1826  when 
Disraeli's  Vivian  Grey  was  published.  The  hero  Vivian 
Grey  with  raven  tresses  is  Byronic  Disraeli  who  is  trying 
by  means  of  genius  to  be  taken  in  tow  by  aristocracy. 
Political  and  social  problems  float  around  in  a  plotless 
plot.  It  was  regarded  in  its  day  as  a  dangerous  novel 
because  of  its  possible  influence  on  young  men  who,  since 
they  possessed  neither  blue  blood  nor  money,  might  ruin 
their  lives  in  trying  by  means  of  fancied  genius  to  get  into 


312  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  upper  circles.  Its  atmosphere  of  politics  was  always  to 
have  a  place  in  English  fiction  from  1826  to  George  Mere- 
dith's Beauchamp's  Career  (1876)  and  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward's  fiction.  What  Oscar  Wilde  has  been  to  the  drama, 
Disraeli  was  to  our  fiction.  Disraeli  knew  the  celebrities 
of  court  and  parliament,  and  his  pen  was  an  epigrammatic, 
ironic  one,  similar  in  construction  to  Peacock's,  just  the 
kind  of  instrument  to  set  in  caricature  the  political  men 
and  women  of  his  time.  Disraeli  in  this  respect  flings 
himself  forward  to  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  who  moves 
across  the  same  upper  ten  parterre  wherein  walk  fine  ladies 
imagining  that  they  can  govern  England  by  their  political 
influence.  If  it  had  not  been  for  Disraeli,  I  do  not  believe 
that  we  would  have  so  many  smoking,  staring,  monocled 
young  fellows  with  parliamentary  aspirations,  flocking 
into  the  salons  of  these  political,  feminine  Solons  in  whose 
hands  are  flattering  magazine  articles,  which  had  been 
written  by  these  young  political  savants,  and  which,  of 
course,  will  be  used  by  these  female  lobbyists  to  get  them 
just  what  political  plums  they  desire. 

Coningsby  (1844)  is  a  purpose  novel,  since  it  portrays  the 
Tory  party  as  the  popular  confederation  of  the  country. 
It  shows  us  just  what  Disraeli's  conservative  idea  of  a 
great  government  is.  He  believes  that  England  already 
by  its  House  of  Commons  had  made  a  phantom  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  that  its  future  success  would  be 
assured  if  its  laws  could  be  kept  in  a  pyramidal  mass 
resting  upon  municipal  and  local  government.  More- 
over, this  pyramid,  in  addition  to  possessing  an  apex  of 
free  monarchy,  should  at  all  times  be  sustained  in  bulk 
by  an  educated  nation  truthfully  represented  by  a  free 
and  intellectual  press.  Disraeli  did  not  wholly  believe  in 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  'since  one  of  the  things  the  people 
had  been  asked  to  do  was  that  of  contributing  to  taxes 
by  a  system  that  makes  a  beggar  with  a  quid  in  his  mouth 


Trollope's  "Michael  Armstrong"        313 

sweeping  a  crossing  give  to  the  imposts.'  Coningsby  in 
the  novel  feels  that  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  has  caused 
"reverence"  to  become  "a  galvanized  corpse,"  govern- 
ments to  be  hated,  and  religions  despised.  Disraeli's 
slogan  was  elevate  the  condition  of  the  laboring  class.  A 
parochial  constitution  was  far  more  important  than  a 
political  constitution,  since  the  order  of  peasantry  was 
indeed  an  order  of  nobility. 

Mrs.  Frances  Trollope  had  considered  the  problem  of 
African  slavery  as  it  existed  in  the  United  States  in  The 
Life  and  Adventures  of  Jonathan  Jefferson  Whitlaw  (1836). 
Charles  Dickens  had  considered  child  slavery  in  Oliver 
Twist  (1838),  and  the  further  slavery  of  youth  in  the 
pernicious  private  schools  of  England  in  Nicholas  Nickleby 
(x839)-  Harriet  Martineau  had  written  about  the  social 
welfare  and  advancement  of  the  negro  in  St.  Domingo 
under  his  great  leader  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  in  The  Hour 
and  the  Man  (1840).  And  it  was  in  1840  that  Mrs. 
Frances  Trollope's  Adventures  of  Michael  Armstrong, 
the  Factory  Boy  had  been  published.  In  this  novel  Mary 
Brotherton,  a  precursor  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  Mar- 
cella,  tries  to  answer  this  question :  "  How  comes  it  that  all 
the  people,  young  and  old,  who  work  in  the  factories  are 
classed  as  ignorant  and  depraved?  "  In  the  cotton  factory 
in  Ashleigh,  Lancashire,  each  of  the  little  children  attend- 
ing to  thousands  of  threads  a  day  receives  two  shillings  a 
week.  These  little  folk  are  slaves  liable  to  be  sold  at  any 
time  to  another  Legree-like  mill-owner  over  at  Deep  Valley 
in  Derbyshire.  Sir  Matthew  Dowling,  who  owns  the 
Lancashire  mill,  employs  a  Doctor  Crockley  who  is  in  the 
graft  system  at  two  hundred  pounds  a  year  for  which 
he  has  pledged  himself  to  say  that  there  are  no  sick  chil- 
dren in  the  factory.  These  little  children  are  frequently 
beaten  with  a  billy-roller.  Mary  Brotherton's  father  had 
drunk  Wilberforce's  health  while  his  own  mills  had  "daily 


314  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

sent  millions  of  groans  to  be  registered  in  heaven."  At 
home  in  his  easy  armchair  he  had  sent  to  heaven  prayers 
for  the  sable  sons  of  Africa,  but  he  had  never  given  a 
thought  to  those  little  white  slaves  down  at  the  factory 
whose  souls  he  had  blackened.  He  believes  as  others  that 
all  factory  people  are  miserable  because  they  are  wicked. 
Mary  Brotherton  goes  a-slummingto  find  out  why  degrada- 
tion follows  as  a  reward  for  honest  labor.  She  wants  to 
get  data  respecting  the  system  by  which  factory  labor  is 
regulated.  She  meets  girls  in  the  wage  system  who  have 
not  tasted  meat  for  years ;  girls  five  years  old  who  are  too 
tired  to  learn  to  read;  and  she  finds  out  why  it  is  child 
labor  drives  fathers  to  drink. 

Over  at  Deep  Valley  'prentice  prison  house,  we  see 
Michael  working  fifteen  hours  a  day,  and  eating  from  the 
sty  what  pigs  have  rejected.  Mrs.  Trollope  shows  us  how 
in  the  excess  of  weariness  children  fall  to  sleep  standing ; 
fall  on  the  machinery  and  are  called  to  life  by  its  lacerating 
touch.  She  believed  that  in  less  than  half  a  century 
during  which  the  factory  system  had  been  in  operation 
the  lineaments  of  the  race  involved  in  it  had  deteriorated, 
that  the  manufacturing  population  were  of  a  lesser  and 
weaker  growth  than  their  agricultural  countrymen,  and 
their  intellectual  faculties  weaker  than  those  of  the  Esqui- 
maux. Mrs.  Trollope  musters  up  enough  courage  to  ask 
that  ten  hours'  work  a  day  be  the  maximum  for  laborers. 
It  is  all  a  frightful  picture.  It  is  impossible  for  fac- 
tory children  to  attend  Sunday  School.  Infectious  fever 
breaks  out  at  Deep  Valley.  Little  Michael  runs  away, 
attempts  suicide,  and  is  hunted  down  just  as  the  slaves 
were  in  the  South.  The  novel  is  much  overdrawn,  but 
much  of  it  was  true  to  the  facts ;  and  the  reader,  whoever 
he  may  be,  sits  down  by  the  death-bed  of  Sir  Matthew 
Dowling  with  peculiar  satisfaction  as  the  five  hundred 
ghosts  of  the  little  children  that  he  had  killed  in  the  fac- 


Child-labor  in  English  Fiction  3J5 

tories  glide  in  to  demonstrate  that  he  was  far  worse  than 
Richard  III. 

This  boy  Michael,  a  descendant  of  Defoe's  Colonel 
Jack,  Godwin's  Ruffigny,  and  Charles  Dickens's  Oliver 
Twist,  was  reincarnated  in  Disraeli's  Devilsdust  in  1845, 
in  Dickens's  David  Copperfield  in  1850,  and  Little  Jo 
in  1853,  and  in  Hugo's  Gavroche  in  1862.  Charles 
Kingsley,  in  Alton  Locke  (1845-50),  avers  that  ten  thou- 
sand boys  and  girls  every  year  in  England  were  kidnapped 
into  hell,  because  of  theft  and  prostitution  licensed  by  the 
government.  There  is  in  the  chapter  on  "How  Folks 
Turn  Chartists"  in  Alton  Locke  a  paragraph  of  two 
sentences,  the  second  of  which  I  quote  for  the  inspirational, 
wrathful  utterances  which  make  plain  the  condition  of 
the  English  workingman  from  1845  to  1850. 

Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  really  wish  to  ascertain  what 
workingmen  actually  do  suffer — to  see  whether  their  political 
discontent  has  not  its  roots,  not  merely  in  fanciful  ambition, 
but  in  misery  and  slavery  most  real  and  agonizing — those 
in  whose  eyes  the  accounts  of  a  system,  or  rather  barbaric 
absence  of  all  system,  which  involves  starvation,  nakedness, 
prostitution,  and  long  imprisonment  in  dungeons  worse  than 
the  cells  of  the  Inquisition,  will  be  invested  with  something 
at  least  of  tragic  interest,  may,  I  hope,  think  it  worth  their 
while  to  learn  how  the  clothes  which  they  wear  are  made, 
and  listen  to  a  few  occasional  statistics,  which  though  they 
may  seem  to  the  wealthy  mere  lists  of  dull  figures  are  to  the 
workingmen  symbols  of  terrible  physical  realities — of  hunger, 
degradation,  and  despair. 

The  deplorable  labor  conditions  in  England  do  not  seem 
to  be  much  better  as  they  are  probed  by  the  pen  of  Dis- 
raeli in  Sybil  (1845)  than  they  had  been  when  tented  to 
the  quick  by  the  pen  of  Mrs.  Trollope  in  Michael  Arm- 
strong (1840).     Referring  to  Devilsdust,  Disraeli  says, 


316  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

They  gave  him  no  food:  he  foraged  for  himself,  and  shared 
with  the  dogs  the  garbage  of  the  streets.  But  still  he  lived; 
stunted  and  pale,  he  defied  even  the  fatal  fever  which  was 
the  only  inhabitant  of  his  cellar  that  never  quitted  it.  And 
slumbering  at  night  on  a  bed  of  mouldering  straw,  his  only 
protection  against  the  plashy  surface  of  his  den,  with  a  dung- 
heap  at  his  head  and  a  cesspool  at  his  feet,  he  still  clung  to 
the  only  roof  which  shielded  him  from  the  tempest. 

Such  was  the  life  of  this  factory  boy,  whose  woes  were 
directly  traceable  to  Lord  Marney's  landlord  system. 

The  condition  of  the  grown-up  laborer,  like  weaver 
Warner,  was  not  much  better.  Disraeli,  describing 
Warner's  abode,  says: 

It  was  a  single  chamber  of  which  he  was  tenant.  In  the 
centre,  placed  so  as  to  gain  the  best  light  which  the  gloomy 
situation  could  afford  was  a  loom.  In  two  corners  of  the 
room  were  mattresses  placed  on  the  floor,  a  check  curtain 
hung  upon  a  string  if  necessary  concealing  them.  In  one  was 
his  sick  wife;  in  the  other,  three  young  children:  two  girls,  the 
eldest  about  eight  years  of  age;  between  them  their  baby 
brother.  An  iron  kettle  was  by  the  hearth  and  on  the  mantle- 
piece  some  candles,  a  few  lucifer  matches,  two  tin  mugs,  a 
paper  of  salt,  and  an  iron  spoon. 

In  such  a  habitation  Warner  worked  on  his  hand-loom 
twelve  hours  a  day  for  a  penny  an  hour.  No  wonder  he 
welcomed  Sybil,  when  she  came  from  the  convent  with  her 
basket  full  of  the  necessaries  of  life. 

Disraeli  shows  that  in  the  factories  English  girls  were 
standing  on  their  feet  working  from  twelve  to  sometimes 
sixteen  hours  a  day;  and,  in  the  collieries,  were  employed 
to  haul  tubs  of  coal  up  subterranean  plashy  roads,  a  cir- 
cumstance which  Disraeli  states  seems  to  have  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  Society  for  the  Abolition  of  Negro  Slavery. 
He  further  asseverates  that  the  Wodgate  apprentices  were 


Disraeli's  " Sybil"  317 

continually  beaten  with  sticks,  knotted  ropes,  hammers, 
their  ears  pulled  until  the  blood  ran,  that  they  were  worked 
from  sixteen  to  twenty  hours  a  day,  were  fed  on  carrion, 
and  were  sold  from  one  master  to  another.  It  was  no 
wonder  that  Dandy  Mick  said  that  a  strike,  a  good  one, 
only  could  save  the  nation,  and  that,  in  the  meantime,  by 
means  of  a  trades  union,  he  would  assassinate  tyranni- 
cal masters  and  demolish  mills,  works,  and  shops,  where 
young  men  were  treated  in  the  brutal  manner  prevailing 
throughout  the  nation. 

Disraeli  worked  out  a  bit  of  social  reform  by  present- 
ing to  the  reader  what  Mr.  Trafford  and  Sybil  gave  to 
the  English  workingman — an  ideal  factory,  homes,  public 
baths,  and  schools  under  the  curate  of  the  church.  The 
working  people  were  encouraged  to  buy  land,  to  build 
cottages,  and  have  gardens.  Disraeli  believed  that  prox- 
imity to  the  employer  meant  cleanliness,  order,  and  en- 
couragement. 

In  the  settlement  of  Traff ord  crime  was  positively  unknown : 
and  the  offences  very  slight.  There  was  not  a  single  person 
in  the  village  of  a  reprobate  character.  The  men  were  well- 
clad;  the  women  had  a  blooming  cheek;  drunkenness  was 
unknown;  while  the  moral  condition  of  the  softer  sex  was 
proportionately  elevated. 

Disraeli  shows  that  English  Radicalism  is  pretending  that 
people  can  be  better  off  than  they  are.  Social  felicity  was 
what  people  needed;  and  statesmen  who  wished  to  retain 
tenure  of  office  and  power  could  never  expect  it  unless  they 
first  secured  the  communal  happiness  of  the  people. 

The  girl  Sybil  in  the  novel  allegorically  represents  the 
convent  aiding  the  cottage,  or  the  church  vitally  connect- 
ing itself  with  the  people.  The  church  had  a  sense  of  the 
feeling  of  degradation  because  of  the  loss  of  faith;  and 
what  faith  could  the  people  have  in  either  cold  Church  or 


318  Motives  in  English  Fiction 


in- 


state holding  itself  aloof.  The  sub-title  of  Sybil  is  Or, 
the  Two  Nations.  Disraeli  comprehended  these  to  be 
the  rich  and  the  poor  who  had  always  been  ignorant  of 
each  other's  wants.  He  believed  that  there  should  be  a 
sympathetic  cord  binding  together  the  two  nations  who, 
however,  should  not  be  governed  by  the  same  laws.  Sybil 
believed  that  the  gulf  could  never  be  bridged ;  but,  by  her 
acts  of  charity,  she  was  bridging  it,  for  the  church  in 
charity  was  leading  the  way  for  the  State  to  adopt  the 
same  method.  The  trouble  was,  as  Disraeli  says,  from 
1839  to  1842,  that  oligarchy  had  been  liberty;  exclusive 
priesthood,  a  national  church ;  sovereignty  something  that 
had  no  dominion;  the  sceptre,  a  pageant;  and  a  subject 
had  been  a  serf.  The  ideal  condition  of  the  nation  would 
come  about  when  free  monarchy  and  a  privileged  people 
would  exist.  Disraeli  pointedly  says,  "the  claims  of  the 
future  are  represented  by  suffering  millions."  With  a 
gift  of  prevision  he  believed  that  the  youth  of  the  nation 
as  trustees  of  posterity  would  work  it  all  out,  when  an  ideal 
church  and  state  would  clasp  sociable  hands  in  effecting 
remedial  legislation  for  the  welfare  of  the  workman.  In 
Sybil  Disraeli  goes  farther  than  Mrs.  Trollope,  who  had 
asked  for  ten  hours  of  work  for  factory-hands,  when  he 
insists  upon  "a  fair  day's  wage  for  a  fair  day's  work,  "  and 
that  a  laborer  for  honestly  working  eight  hours  a  day 
should  receive  "a  fair  day's  wage. " 

Disraeli  wrote  Coningsby  and  Sybil  to  explain  himself 
to  his  electorate  so  that  he  would  be  better  understood  as  a 
political  leader  and  be  permitted  to  grasp  as  substance 
his  dream  of  triumph.  On  ascertaining  that  Lord  Mon- 
mouth's fortune  has  been  left  to  some  one  else  Coningsby 
as  he  walks  along  the  streets  of  London  soliloquizes  thus : 

Whether  he  inherited  or  forfeited  fortunes,  what  was  it  to 
the  passing  throng?     They  would  not  share  his  splendor,  or 


Disraeli's  "Sybil"  319 

his  luxury,  or  his  comfort.  But  a  word  from  his  lip,  a  thought 
from  his  brain,  expressed  at  the  right  time,  at  the  right  place, 
might  turn  their  hearts,  might  influence  their  passions,  might 
change  their  opinions,  might  affect  their  destiny.  Nothing  is 
great  but  the  personal.  .  .  .  You  must  give  men  new  ideas, 
you  must  teach  them  new  words,  you  must  modify  their 
manners,  you  must  change  their  laws,  you  must  root  out 
prejudices,  subvert  convictions,  if  you  wish  to  be  great. 


Though  Disraeli  believed  that  Downing  Street  governed 
England,  still  this  soliloquy  of  Coningsby's  all  the  way 
through  echoes  Disraeli's  philosophy  of  life;  and  his 
political  philosophy  is  contained  in  the  surprise  of  Sybil 
who  had  come  to  London  to  handle  the  labor  problem. 
Sybil  ascertained  "that  great  thoughts  have  very  little  to 
do  with  the  business  of  the  world,  that  human  affairs,  even 
in  an  age  of  revolution,  are  the  subject  of  compromise ;  and 
that  the  essence  of  compromise  is  littleness."  England's 
states-general  selected  by  the  people  "turned  out  to  be  a 
plebeian  senate  of  wild  ambitions  and  sinister  and  selfish 
ends";  and  Sybil  turned  from  it  to  the  opposing  faction 
which,  when  analyzed,  proved  to  be  conservatives  well- 
organized  and  well  "supported  by  the  interests,  the  sym- 
pathies, the  honest  convictions,  and  the  strong  prejudices 
of  classes  influential  not  merely  from  their  wealth  but 
even  by  their  numbers. "  Thus  Disraeli  tried  to  make  his 
character  Sybil  and  his  readers  see  that  England  was 
naturally  inclined  to  conservatism,  and  that  the  people 
should  readily  see  that  they  could  not  hope  for  much,  if 
they  chose  wild-eyed,  inefficient  delegates  from  the  lower 
and  middle  class.  The  people  must  choose  their  leaders 
from  a  rejuvenated  aristocracy;  and,  as  we  have  said 
before,  then  state,  church,  and  masses,  would  have  the 
sense  of  feeling  better  off  as  all  three  clasped  hands  for 
social  felicity,  thus  making  England  a  strong  and  puissant 


320  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

nation  by  virtue  of  its  aristocracy  of  monarch  and  charch, 
the  rich  and  the  poor — and  the  aristocracy  of  the  poor  was 
to  be  obtained  for  them  by  satisfying  their  cravings 
for  aesthetic  and  ethical  ideals.  Compromise  between 
the  two  classes  meant  "littleness,"  but  this  "littleness" 
spelled  "greatness"  as  it  took  proper  care  of  the  nation's 
monarchical,  religious,  and  economic  welfare.  The  key 
by  which  Disraeli  would  open  all  doors  of  difficulty  was 
compromise.  It  was  the  key  that  in  turning  gave  him  the 
heartache  and  he  would  gladly  have  seen  it  rusty,  brt  he 
was  compelled  always  to  keep  it  bright  by  use. 

The  frames  of  the  spectacles,  through  which  are  seen 
economic  conditions  becoming  significant  enough  in  their 
phases  to  attract  the  attention  of  leaders  in  political  life, 
had  been  bent  into  shape  by  Henry  Brooke's  Fool  of 
Quality  (1766),  by  Charlotte  Smith's  Desmond  (1792),  Hol- 
croft's  Anna  St.  Ives  (1792),  Godwin's  Caleb  Williams 
(1794),  Maria  Edgeworth's  Castle  Rackrent  (1800),  Absen- 
tee (1812),  and  Patronage  (1814),  Scott's  Waverley  Novels, 
Lady  Morgan's  Florence  Macarthy  (1818)  in  which  Con 
Crawley,  one  of  the  group  of  political  adventurers,  is  the 
caricature  of  John  Wilson  Croker,  the  "Rigby"  of  Dis- 
raeli's Coningsby,  and  "The  O'Briens  and  the  O'Flahertys  " 
(1827),  by  the  Banims'  pictures  of  the  dark  administration 
of  government  in  Ireland,  and  by  Bulwer's  Disowned 
( 1 829)  in  which  democracy  Wolfe  wages  war  upon  aristo- 
cracy Lord  Ulswater  resulting  in  republican  Wolfe's  kill- 
ing the  hero  Algernon  Mordaunt,  who  lived  in  England 
of  the  eighteenth  century  prior  to  the  time  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  Paul  Clifford  (1830)  which  urges  the 
humanizing  of  criminal  laws  advocated  by  Romilly,  and 
Ernest  Maltr avers  (1837)  and  its  sequel  Alice  (1838)  in 
which  is  seen  the  villain  Lumley  Ferrers  fingering  the  red 
tape  of  ministerial  duties  for  the  mushroom  English 
peerage.     Bulwer  in  Alice  says,  "We  talk  of  education 


Disraeli,  Bulwer,  and  Kingsley         321 

for  the  poor,  but  we  forget  how  much  it  is  needed  by  the 
rich  " ;  ..."  the  more  the  Municipal  Spirit  pervades  every 
vein  of  the  vast  body,  the  more  certain  may  we  be  that  re- 
form and  change  must  come  from  universal  opinion,  which 
is  slow,  and  constructs  ere  it  destroys,"  and  points  to 
France,  under  Louis  Philippe,  where  an  aristocracy  had 
been  demolished  by  excluding  the  people.  France  pos- 
sessed thirty-three  million  people  and  less  than  two 
hundred  electors;  and  the  United  States  were  not  set  up 
as  an  ideal  form  of  government,  since  if  "People  have  no 
other  tyrant,  their  own  public  opinion  becomes  one." 
Bulwer  in  Alice  strongly  advocates  the  abolishment  of  the 
death  penalty  for  inadequate  offence  and  the  substitution 
of  the  "morality  of  atonement, "  giving  to  the  criminal  in 
Error  "the  reward  of  submission  to  its  suffering."  We 
have  already  enlarged  upon  Mrs.  Trollope's  Michael  Arm- 
strong (1840).  But  it  is  not  until  we  come  to  Coningsby 
and  Sybil  that  we  can  apply  W.  F.  Monypenny's  high 
estimate  set  on  these  two  novels  and  say  these  indeed 
are  "the  creation  of  the  political  novel,"  since  we  are 
looking  through  the  two  great  magnifying  lenses  in  the 
spectacles,  the  frames  of  which  had  been  fashioned  by 
Disraeli's  predecessors  mentioned  above. 

A  chapel  door  opens  in  Charles  Kingsley 's  Yeast  (1848) 
from  which  comes  forth  Argemone  Lavington  with  eyes 
shining  like  "twin  lakes  of  still  azure  beneath  a  broad 
marble  cliff  of  polished  forehead,"  and  her  rich  chestnut 
hair  rippling  downward  round  a  towering  neck,  to  go  up 
to  the  fever  patient  at  Ashy  to  contract  typhus.  Kings- 
ley  breaks  forth  into  his  customary  violent  statements 
such  as,  "and  then  they  wonder  why  men  turn  Chartists" 
.  .  .  "Wash  Ashy  clean  with  the  nun-pool."  Kingsley 
has  no  use  for  Catholicism  when  "a  cathedral  is, "  accord- 
ing to  Coleridge,  "a  petrified  religion."  All  in  England 
must  help  the  poor  in  the  spirit  of  the  nuns  of  Whitford ;  for 


322  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

otherwise  all  the  English  as  the  Lavingtons  would  receive 
the  punishment  of  the  curse  of  the  nuns.  The  problem  of 
social  welfare  is  after  all  a  church  problem.  And  so  we 
see  in  this  respect  that  Kingsley  does  not  differ  from  Dis- 
raeli in  Sybil.  The  punishment  that  comes  to  the  state 
for  refusing  to  give  to  a  working  community  proper  sani- 
tary conditions  is  that  fate  that  came  to  Lydia's  father,  in 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  The  Mating  of  Lydia  (191 3),  who 
would  not  spend  his  money  on  the  houses  of  the  working- 
men  around  his  estate  but  on  curios.  The  fierce  old  man 
was  assassinated  by  one  of  the  peasantry  he  had  insanely 
refused  to  help  or  care  for. 

The  time  had  come  in  English  fiction,  as  Disraeli  states, 
when  no  longer  the  Turkey  merchant,  or  the  West  India 
planter,  or  the  Nabob,  or  the  loanmonger,  was  to  receive 
analytic  study,  but  the  manufacturer.  Mrs.  Gaskell  in 
the  preface  of  Mary  Barton  in  October,  1848,  writes,  "I 
know  nothing  of  political  economy,  or  the  theories  of 
trade. "  In  her  novel  her  idea  of  interdependence  of  rich 
and  poor  by  a  knowledge  of  and  love  for  each  other  is 
strongly  reminiscent  of  Disraeli's  theory  in  Sybil.  Mrs. 
Gaskell  makes  a  study  of  destitution  in  the  manufacturing 
districts,  especially  Manchester,  and  flourishes  in  our  faces 
the  petition  of  1839  in  which  workmen  appealed  to  Parlia- 
ment for  a  sympathetic  inspection  of  their  woes.  The 
voice  of  the  people  as  she  hears  it  is  "machines  is  the 
ruin  of  poor  folk. "  She  likens  the  uneducated  masses  to 
the  lonely  creature  of  Frankenstein's. 

The  people  rise  up  to  life;  they  irritate  us,  they  terrify  us, 
and  we  become  their  enemies.  Then,  in  the  sorrowful  moment 
of  our  triumphant  power,  their  eyes  gaze  on  us  with  a  mute 
reproach.  Why  have  we  made  them  what  they  are;  a 
powerful  monster,  yet  without  the  inner  means  for  peace  and 
happiness. 


Disraeli:  Mrs.  Gaskell  323 

John  Barton,  Chartist,  Communist,  Trades  Unionist, 
murders  Harry  Carson,  whose  father  is  left  to  figure  out 
the  crime  as  the  result  of  "they  did  not  know  what  they 
did."  The  elder  Carson  always  had  a  cold  and  hard 
exterior  for  those  who  were  his  distant  friends,  but  by  the 
loss  of  his  son  in  the  strike  his  dearest  wish  is  to  create 
a  perfect  understanding,  respect,  and  affection,  between 
masters  and  workingmen  who  seemed  only  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  each  other  through  the  money  transactions 
affecting  their  material  welfare.  Therefore,  Carson  be- 
lieved that  he  should  have  under  his  supervision  educated 
workers  capable  of  judging,  not  automata.  Thus  we 
see  how  manufacturers  by  means  of  suffering  may  be  led 
into  sympathetically  managing  wage-earners.  Accord- 
ing to  Mrs.  Gaskell  the  spirit  of  Christ  should  be  the  regu- 
lating law  between  the  two  nations — the  rich  and  the 
poor.  Esther  in  this  novel  is  a  pitiable  object  flickering 
a  shadow  forward  to  Dickens's  Martha  in  David  Copper- 
field.  Mrs.  Gaskell  in  North  and  South  (1855)  echoes  the 
note  already  sounded  in  Mary  Barton.  Personal  inter- 
course between  masters  and  workmen  was  the  solution. 
Both  parties  should  understand  each  other's  tricks  of 
temper  and  modes  of  speech.  Above  all,  the  employer 
should  understand  and  appreciate  the  intense  mental 
labor  and  forethought  required  to  perfect  a  complete  plan 
that  emerges  like  a  piece  of  machinery  when  the  employee 
co-operates  with  him  in  making  it.  Mr.  Thornton  is  a 
pleasing  picture  of  an  honest,  kindly  disposed  mill-owner 
from  the  North  who  is  rewarded  after  the  failure  by  receiv- 
ing another  start  with  the  money  thrust  into  his  hands  by 
Margaret  Hale  from  the  South. 

Henry  Senior  in  Charles  Vernon  (1848)  shows  the  ill 
treatment  of  slaves  in  the  West  Indies.  Charlotte  Bronte, 
in  Shirley  (1849),  makes  us  hear  again  the  cry  of  "ma- 
chines is  the   ruin   of  poor  folk";  and,   the   mill-owner, 


324  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Mr.  Moore,  furnishes  a  prototype  for  Mrs.  Gaskell's  Mr. 
Thornton.  Dickens  in  Hard  Times  (1854),  delineates  Mr. 
Gradgrind,  parceling  out  human  nature,  and  Bounderby 
so  as  to  give  orthodox  political  economy  a  good  pounding. 
He  opens  the  Coketown  mills  wherein  are ' '  a  race  who  would 
have  found  more  favor  with  some  people,  if  Providence 
had  seen  fit  to  make  them  only  'hands'."  Dickens 
describes  the  mill-workers  in  all  realism  to  arouse  sym- 
pathy for  such  "hands"  as  Stephen  Blackpool  and  Ra- 
chael,  whom  Stephen  loves  with  no  illicit  passion  but  with 
all  the  integrity  of  his  nature.  All  of  us  feel  bitter  against 
Bounderby,  the  bull  of  humility  with  iron  stare  and  metal- 
lic laugh,  the  owner  of  such  "hands."  Dickens  in  Little 
Dorrit  (1855-7)  delineates  William  Dorrit  in  the  Mar- 
shalsea  as  having  received  such  treatment  as  not  to  bring 
the  peace  and  happiness  that  his  friends  had  expected 
would  be  his  after  being  released  from  the  prison.  One  of 
Dickens's  purposes  was  to  prove  that  a  debtors'  prison 
unfits  men  for  becoming  social  beings,  since  it  fits  them 
rather  for  a  greater  care  and  burden  to  be  carried  by  the 
state  and  society.  Dinah  Mulock  Craik,  in  John  Halifax, 
Gentleman  (1856)  stirs  the  reader  with  an  exciting  bread 
riot.  Charles  Reade,  in  It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend 
(1856),  from  his  scrapbook  full  of  terrible  up-to-date 
happenings  in  prisons,  takes  the  reader  back  through 
Dickensian  Fleet  and  the  Godwinian  cell  to  Defoe's 
Newgate.  In  this  novel  there  is  seen  Robinson  enduring 
horrible  tortures  at  the  hands  of  Hawes,  who  is  the  abuser 
of  prisoners;  and  we  are  behind  Eden,  the  curate,  who 
brings  about  an  investigation  in  the  prison,  and  put  our 
shoulders  to  his  as  he  is  triumphant  in  finally  removing 
Hawes.  In  Hard  Cash  (1863)  the  horrible  abuses  in  pri- 
vate lunatic  asylums  were  revealed ;  and  in  Put  Yourself  in 
his  Place  (1870)  he  delineates  the  vile  actions  of  trade 
unions. 


Disraeli :  Anthony  Trollope  325 

Anthony  Trollope  in  Can  You  Forgive  Her?  (1864), 
Phineas  Finn  (1869),  Phineas  Redux  (1874),  The  Prime 
Minister  (1876),  and  Duke's  Children  (1880)  presents  an 
interesting  group  of  politicians  holding  the  reins  of  English 
government.  These  politicians  are  almost  as  fascinating 
as  his  curates,  who  are  portrayed  in  the  series  from  The 
Warden  (1855)  to  The  Last  Chronicle  of  Bar  set  (1867). 
In  fact  it  was  his  success  in  satirically  depicting  clergymen 
that  made  him  think  of  doing  just  as  much  for  those 
aspiring  to  be  leaders  in  parliamentary  life.  There  is  no 
big  life  or  big  love  or  big  politics  in  Can  You  Forgive  Her? 
but  young  blue-eyed  Lady  Glencora  and  her  husband 
Plantagenet  Palliser,  whom  she  does  not  love,  but  the 
dissolute  Fitzgerald,  are  fashioned  in  good  form,  as  well  as 
George  Vavasor's  taking  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  Alice's  money  and  the  ride  to  fox-hounds.  In  Phineas 
Finn  the  hero  Phineas,  from  Ireland,  rides  into  politics 
on  debt's  back  and  is  thrown  into  the  Palliser  set.  We 
watch  him  fail  to  make  success  in  his  maiden  speech  in 
the  House,  but  at  length  he  reappears  to  succeed  in 
oratory.  Trollope  shoves  us  into  the  "semi-purple  of 
ministerial  influences";  and  his  delineation  of  politics 
in  its  forms  and  technicalities  is  so  correct  that  it  would 
take  a  cabinet  member  to  convict  Trollope  of  any  error. 
Proceedings  in  the  House  are  interestingly  portrayed; 
and  we  try  to  get  the  hang  of  parliamentary  procedure 
just  as  Phineas  Finn,  and  somehow  seem  to  feel  that 
there  is  nothing  beyond  our  comprehension  in  the  way  a 
nation's  salvation  is  secured.  Phineas  loves  Laura,  then 
Violet,  and  at  last  after  resigning  from  Parliament  goes 
back  to  Ireland  to  marry  his  first  love,  Mary  Flood,  and 
to  become  an  inspector  of  county  poor-houses  for  Cork. 
At  thirty  he  was  so  "  politicianized  "  that  nobody  trusted 
him  to  make  a  penny  at  his  barristry  work.  In  The  Prime 
Minister,  there  is  the  pleading  attitude  of  Trollope  toward 


326  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

the  grinding  despicableness  of  Ferdinand  Lopez,  who  is 
calmly  wicked  in  the  strangling  hold  he  has  on  persever- 
ance. In  a  cold-blooded,  lifeless  manner  he  suavely  fas- 
tens himself  to  Emily  Wharton  to  love  her.  And  the 
question  is :  Did  he  love  her?  The  only  redeeming  quality 
he  possesses  is  that  courage  which  stayed  with  him  to 
carry  him  to  a  horrible  death.  Throughout  the  massive 
volumes  of  the  commonplace  great  action  consequent  to 
great  passion  never  occurs.  There  are  no  great  outbursts 
from  Lopez;  there  is  not  even  screaming  or  stamping  of 
the  foot  on  the  part  of  his  wife  Emily,  who  sits  back  to 
watch  events,  and  who  is  quite  different  from  Lady  Glen- 
cora  who  creates  them.  Lady  Glencora  Palliser  and 
Ferdinand  Lopez  hold  the  reins  of  government ;  Emily  and 
the  Duke  are  passively  and  coldly  content  in  being  at 
the  mercy  of  such  drivers.  Lady  Glencora  is  the  centre 
of  any  energy  that  a  Trollopian  reader  wishes  to  work 
off;  and  Emily  patiently  submits  to  the  process  that  will 
slowly  well-nigh  kill  her;  and  as  for  the  Duke  he  is 
absorbed  in  the  Nirvana  of  "decimal  coinage."  Every- 
where like  a  fox,  Trollope  always  keeps  his  nose  to  the 
ground  of  the  elaboration  of  details  that  serve  him  in 
compiling  his  events.  There  is  the  prevalence  of  patron- 
age and  pull ;  and  occasionally  we  look  up  from  the  pages 
to  ask  if  such  circumstances  and  such  environment  could 
produce  so  much  blackness  that  is  the  pall  covering  the 
hatching  of  villainy.  Why  in  life  should  so  much  tragedy 
follow  upon  the  interference  of  a  third  party?  Why 
should  Lady  Glencora's  life  at  its  beginning  have  been 
intrusted  to  meddlers  who  helped  her  to  fame  but  not  to 
true  love.  One  is  angry  enough  to  demolish  the  whole 
political  series  by  altering  Can  You  Forgive  Her  ?  so  as  to 
make  Lady  Glencora  marry  the  dissolute  Fitzgerald.  But 
alas!  Trollope  wants  as  elsewhere  in  his  political  series 
only  to  show  that  politics  makes  debtors,  villains,  and 


Disraeli:  Anthony  Trollope  327 

often  deprives  a  noble  young  woman  of  the  proper  man 
upon  whom  she  has  bestowed  the  treasure  of  her  heart. 
Thus  Trollope,  though  well-qualified  by  his  own  experi- 
ence as  Post  Office  official,  and  as  a  one-time  candidate 
for  Parliament,  and  by  his  missions  in  behalf  of  the  Post 
Office  which  sent  him  to  Ireland,  Egypt,  United  States, 
and  West  Indies,  to  contribute  variations  to  the  political 
novel  that  Disraeli  created,  lacked  the  perspective  of  the 
view  of  the  statesman  such  as  his  great  predecessor  pos- 
sessed; therefore  his  novels,  though  similar  to  Disraeli's 
in  being  poorly  plotted  and  weak  in  characterization,  can 
not  at  all  be  compared  in  excellence  to  those  of  Disraeli, 
who,  while  not  a  great  novelist,  was  however  a  great 
political-novelist  since  he,  and  not  Trollope,  knew  every 
great  phase  of  the  economic  conditions  that  attained  to 
political  significance  and  that  make  the  world's  heart  still 
throb  as  it  contemplates  all  that  the  nineteenth  century 
ethically  did  for  the  welfare  of  England's  body-politic 
through  the  agency  of  Disraeli  and  Gladstone.  There  is 
something  larger  in  Disraeli's  fiction  than  the  picture  of 
peers  drinking  tea  in  a  manorial  hall  or  a  Dandy  Mick 
joining  a  trades-union  dedicated  to  the  purpose  of  assassi- 
nating all  tyrannical  mill-owners.  It  is  to  be  remembered 
that  Disraeli's  tea-tippling  characters  in  a  castle  in  their 
conversation  are  generally  trying  to  promote  empire- 
building  ;  and  that  nothing  constructive  for  the  expansion 
of  England's  economic  welfare  grows  out  of  any  table-talk 
indulged  in  by  Lady  Glencora  and  her  husband,  who  only 
has  to  reach  out  a  hand  to  receive  the  great  offices  of  State 
that  he  does  not  greatly  deserve. 

George  Eliot  also  saw  the  possibility  of  using  politics 
in  her  fiction  as  a  means  of  regenerating  mankind  and 
eagerly  studied  the  radicalism  of  her  day  and  the  Reform 
Bill  of  1832,  which  forms  the  enveloping  action  of  Felix 
Holt  (1866).     In  this  novel  we  see  the  Treby  Riot  and 


328  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

attend  the  trial  of  Felix  Holt,  the  Radical  (Gerald  Massey), 
for  his  participation  in  it.  George  Eliot  emphasizes 
Esther  Lyon  in  the  act  of  developing  a  heart  by  reason  of 
Felix's  lecturing  to  the  workingmen.  Twenty-one  years 
after  Disraeli's  Sybil  (1845)  it  is  interesting  indeed  to  see 
how  similar  George  Eliot's  view  of  conservatism  is  to  that 
of  the  statesman  Jew.  Felix  Holt  is  a  faint  replica  of 
Egremont,  in  Sybil,  who  believed  in  the  aristocracy  of  the 
conservative  element  in  English  politics  and  who  wanted 
political  preferment  only  that  by  it  he  might  advance  the 
cause  of  the  poor  people.  Felix  Holt,  the  apprentice  to 
a  watchmaker  and  teacher  of  small  boys,  is  a  socialistic 
reformer,  who  as  a  suspicious  character  is  asked  by  Mr. 
Chubb  to  leave  the  "Sugar  Loaf,"  the  inn  where  the 
Sproxton  colliers  talked  local  politics.  George  Eliot  is  at 
home  in  handling  the  lower  classes  in  their  political  talk 
in  the  "Sugar  Loaf"  or  in  the  steward's  room  of  Treby 
Manor;  and  she  is  equally  at  home  when  manipulating 
the  political  conversation  of  the  upper  classes  such  as 
that  occurring  between  Harold  Transome,  who  is  standing 
as  radical  for  Parliament,  and  political  agent  Johnson, 
who  knows  all  that  a  radical  orator  should  tell  on  the 
platform  in  order  to  trick  his  audience.  Felix  Holt  along 
with  his  creator  George  Eliot  believed  there  was  not 
much  difference  between  a  Liberal  and  a  Tory;  and 
George  Eliot  further  asseverates  that  the  radicalism 
which  Felix  voiced  could  not  hurt  the  country  very  much. 
Felix  says: 

I'm  a  radical  myself,  and  mean  to  work  all  my  life  long 
against  privilege,  monopoly,  and  oppression  ...  I  shall  go 
away  as  soon  as  I  can  to  some  large  town,  some  ugly,  wicked, 
miserable  place.  I  want  to  be  a  demagogue  of  a  new  sort;  an 
honest  one,  if  possible,  who  will  tell  the  people  they  are  blind 
and  foolish,  and  neither  flatter  them  nor  fatten  on  them. 


Disraeli  and  George  Eliot  329 

George  Eliot  echoes  Disraeli  most  strongly  when  she  asks 
for  amelioration  of  public  opinion  and  conscience;  and 
states  that  laws  are  as  reeds  to  be  bent  or  broken  with 
impunity  unless  people  ethically  believe  in  the  statutes 
they  are  called  upon  to  frame  and  support.  Disraeli  did 
not  believe  much  in  the  ethics  of  the  administration  that 
set  in  motion  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  but  he  did  believe 
in  an  administration  that  would  exorcise  the  spectres  of 
poverty,  ignorance,  and  injustice.  George  Eliot  psycho- 
logically understood  the  man  of  the  masses  better  than 
Disraeli,  and  in  Felix  Holt  was  successful  in  presenting  a 
fascinating  study  of  the  erstwhile  factory-laborer  and  poet 
Gerald  Massey,  spokesman  of  the  people,  swimming  on 
the  crest  of  the  new  democratic  wave  of  her  time;  but 
she  understood  Disraeli's  Toryism  enough  to  know  that 
nothing  good  could  come  out  of  violent  reforms,  and 
therefore  she  was  a  conservative  not  much  believing 
in  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  yet  strange  to  say  sympathiz- 
ing with  the  best  in  the  new  democracy  advocated  by 
Felix  Holt  and  that  radicalism  that  plays  such  a  promi- 
nent part  in  Meredith's Beauchamp's  Career  (1876).  The 
likeness  of  a  woman-conservative,  such  as  was  George 
Eliot,  is  found  to-day  in  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  whose 
Marcella  gradually  disentangled  herself  from  the  arms 
of  the  socialistic  orator  to  cast  herself  into  the  arms  of 
Raeburn,  the  conservative,  who  at  first  had  been  repellent 
because  according  to  her  belief  he  was  one  of  those  who 
allowed  the  mill-owner  to  abuse  the  factory  hand,  the 
sweater  in  the  slums  to  impoverish  the  home-worker,  and 
the  landlord  to  starve  the  farm-laborer.  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  in  Robert  Elsmere  (1888)  shows  the  failure  of  a  good 
clergyman  in  settlement  work;  in  Marcella  (1894)  the 
uselessness  of  a  woman's  soiling  her  skirts  by  slumming; 
in  Sir  George  Tressady  (1895)  the  parliamentary  strife,  the 
strike,  and  the  disaster  in  the  coal-mine  into  which  Sir 


330  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

George  descends  as  a  hero  to  die ;  in  The  Case  of  Richard 
Meynell  (191 1)  and  The  Mating  of  Lydia  (1913)  touches 
slightly  upon  important  social  problems;  in  The  Coryston 
Family  (191 3)  stresses  the  burning  divorce  problem;  and 
in  Delia  Blanchflower  (1914)  the  futility  of  the  suffragette 
movement. 

For  a  moment  let  us  glance  again  at  Disraeli's  novels 
for  the  purpose  of  putting  away  in  memory's  box  the  fact 
already  noted  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  considered  noble 
religion  as  playing  as  important  a  role  for  his  country's 
welfare  as  noble  politics.  After  Tancred,  full  of  religious 
life  in  Palestine,  was  published  in  1847,  Disraeli  wrote 
two  novels:  Lothair,  published  in  1870,  and  Endymion, 
published  in  1880.  Disraeli  in  his  novels  always  had 
something  to  say  about  the  religion  of  the  Jew,  and  there 
had  been  an  intensely  conventual,  religious  fervor  in  Sybil; 
therefore,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  in  Lothair  he 
considers  the  fascinating  attacks  made  upon  Lothair  to 
pull  him  into  the  Catholic  Church.  The  religious  element 
had  always  been  a  strong  dominating  factor  in  English 
fiction  from  Malory's  Le  Morte  Darthur  to  Richardson's 
Sir  Charles  Grandison,  and  down  to  the  beginning  of  the 
Victorian  era,  as  any  one  can  judge  if  he  has  read  the 
preceding  pages  of  this  book  with  discernment.  Religion 
and  its  controversies  were  not  to  be  neglected  by  the  great 
novelists  of  the  greatest  epoch  of  fiction  that  we  have  had. 
It  is  an  easy  crayfish  movement  from  the  Catholicism  of 
Lothair  to  the  Puseyism  in  Coningsby  (1844)  and  to  the 
denunciation  of  the  Anglican  Church  in  Mrs.  Frances 
Trollope's  The  Vicar  of  Wrexhill  (1837). 

Lady  G.  Fullerton's  Ellen  Middleton  (1844)  is  a  first- 
rate  thesis  on  the  High  Church  feeling  against  Catholic 
Emancipation.  Kingsley's  Alton  Locke  (1845-50)  and 
Yeast  (1848),  to  which  we  have  already  referred,  were 
theses    on    Christian    socialism.      Ilypatia     (1853)    was 


Religion  in  Victorian  Fiction  331 

another  whack  of  the  muscular  Christianity  of  Kingsley's 
on  the  back  of  the  Anglo-Catholic  Church  which,  since 
1847,  by  means  of  Keble,  Newman,  and  Pusey,  had  been 
trespassing  on  the  territory  of  the  Anglican  Church  to 
blindfold  and  kidnap  some  of  its  most  brilliant  disciples. 
The  old  church  of  the  fifth  century  in  Africa  was  under 
the  control  of  rabid  and  militant  monks  and  leaders  like 
Peter,  and  Kingsley  in  striking  at  it  and  its  foes  uncon- 
sciously was  striking  not  only  the  Catholic  Church  but 
was  cruelly  rapping  all  the  weak  spots  on  the  body  of  his 
own  church  that  he  was  pugnaciously  defending.  The 
reader  feels  after  perusing  Hypatia  that  he  should  ask 
Kingsley,  Where  could  a  thinking  man  obtain  peace  and 
rest  amid  the  chaos  of  religious  thought  which  was  lodged 
behind  the  ivied  walls  of  England's  cathedrals?  In  the 
novel  there  is  a  feeling  on  the  part  of  the  reader  that  it  was 
not  Philammon,  or  Hypatia,  or  Pelagia,  who  obtained 
happiness,  but  Miriam's  son,  the  Jew,  who  with  his  philo- 
sophy of  cynicism  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the 
novel  would  have  none  of  the  manifestations  of  Christ, 
or  Zeus  on  Calvary,  or  the  sensual  paganism  of  the 
followers  of  the  Amal  the  lover  of  Pelagia.  Thus  is 
depicted  in  form  of  fiction  the  internecine  strife  in  the 
religious  life  of  England  following  upon  the  Oxford  move- 
ment. Also  the  Keble  breeze  sweeps  around  the  High 
Church  in  Charlotte  Yonge's  Heir  of  Redely ffe  (1853) . 

Anthony  Trollope  in  Barchester  Towers  (1857),  the  se- 
quel to  The  Warden,  uses  as  a  keynote  for  his  fiction  the 
words  of  Sydney  Smith :  ' '  In  these  recreant  days  you  can 
not  find  the  majesty  of  St.  Paul  beneath  the  cassock  of  a 
curate."  We  are  all  well  acquainted  with  Dr.  Proudie, 
the  consecrated  bishop  of  Barchester,  who,  in  a  liberal 
manner  endured  "the  idolatry  of  Rome,  tolerated  the 
infidelity  of  Socinianism,  and  was  hand  and  glove  with  the 
Presbyterian  synods  of  Scotland  and  Ulster."     And  we 


332  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

are  better  acquainted  with  his  wife,  the  despotic  virago, 
who  managed  all  of  her  husband's  ecclesiastical  affairs. 
At  the  end  of  the  novel  Dr.  Proudie  gets  a  seat  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  the  reader  learns  that  autocratic, 
diocesan  authority  only  could  be  successful  when  it 
emerged  from  the  petticoats  of  a  Mrs.  Proudie's  wardrobe. 
In  the  first  part  of  the  novel  he  had  continually  rebelled 
and  had  even  banged  a  door  in  the  face  of  his  enraged 
spouse,  but  at  last  he  gave  up  the  fight  for  he  had  been 
repetticoated.  The  Reverend  Mr.  Slope  dances  forward 
to  find  a  partner  in  Trollope's  Ferdinand  Lopez,  but  in 
stealth  and  avarice  used  to  obtain  power  Slope  is  many 
shades  lighter  in  villainy  than  the  subtle  scoundrel  in  The 
Prime  Minister.  Slope  in  spite  of  his  weakness  arouses  our 
secret  satisfaction  when  he  is  strong  enough  to  array  him- 
self against  Mrs.  Proudie.  He  and  Madeline  Neroni,  the 
one-legged  siren,  who  had  in  her  the  mischief  of  a  centi- 
pede, are  made  out  of  the  same  clay  as  Hall  Caine's  John 
Storm  and  Gloria  Quayle.  In  1857  appeared  George 
Eliot's  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life;  in  1859,  Adam  Bede  which 
gives  a  view  of  the  Methodists  with  whom  we  have  already 
become  acquainted  in  the  Reverend  Richard  Graves's 
The  Spiritual  Quixote  (1772)  and  in  Maturin's  Women,  or 
Pour  et  Contre  (1818);  in  1863,  Romola  in  which  Savona- 
rola, the  morning  star  of  the  Reformation  in  Italy,  tells  the 
wife  of  Tito  that  the  Catholic  Church  refuses  to  dissolve 
marriage  by  sanctioning  either  desertion  or  divorce;  and 
in  1876,  Daniel  Deronda  which  champions  the  cause  of 
orthodox  Judaism  against  the  melting-pot  idea  which 
Zangwill  has  recently  made  prominent. 

Charles  Reade's  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth  (1861) 
presents  the  conflict  between  church  and  home.  It  is  the 
reversal  of  Matthew  Arnold's  poem  The  Forsaken  Merman. 
It  is  the  woman  forsaken  by  her  husband.  What  does  it 
profit  a  man,  if  he  gain  the  whole  world  of  religion,  if  it  is 


Reade  and  Shorthouse  333 

gained  at  the  expense  of  his  wife?  The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth,  presenting  the  spiritual  tragedy  of  monk  Gerard 
and  Margaret  Brandt  with  the  Middle  Ages  for  a  back- 
ground, not  many  years  ago  was  attuned  to  another 
variation  of  the  same  theme  by  Mrs.  Voynich  in  The 
Gadfly,  wherein  a  Cardinal  has  gained  the  whole  world 
of  honors  in  his  church  by  sacrificing  his  boy.  Mrs. 
Margaret  Oliphant  and  George  Macdonald  kept  religion 
alive  in  their  novels  of  the  sixties  and  seventies.  Joseph 
Henry  Shorthouse's  John  Inglesant,  Gentleman  (1881)  was 
an  artistic  expression  of  a  High  Churchman  against  the 
materialism  of  his  age.  The  impressive  scene  in  the  novel 
is  that  of  the  trap  set  in  a  moonlighted  forest  for  the  cap- 
ture of  Inglesant' s  soul. 

The  sylvan  arcades  seemed  like  a  painful  scene-piece  upon 
a  satanic  stage,  supernaturally  alight  to  further  deeds  of  sin, 
and  silent  and  unpeopled,  lest  the  wrong  should  be  interrupted 
or  checked.  To  Inglesant's  excited  fancy  evil  beings  thronged 
its  shadowy  paths,  present  to  the  spiritual  sense,  though 
concealed  of  set  purpose  from  the  feeble  human  sight.  .  .  .The 
rustling  breeze  was  like  a  whisper  from  heaven  that  reminded 
him  of  his  better  self.  It  would  seem  hell  overdid  it ;  the  very 
stillness  for  miles  around,  the  almost  concerted  plan,  sent 
flashing  through  his  brain  the  remembrance  of  another  house, 
equally  guarded  for  a  like  purpose,  into  which  years  ago  he  had 
forced  his  way  to  render  help  in  such  a  case  as  this.  The  long- 
past  life  of  those  days  rushed  into  his  mind— the  sacramental 
Sundays,  the  repeated  vows,  the  light  of  heaven  in  the  soul, 
the  kneeling  forms  in  Little  Gidding  Chapel,  the  face  of  Mary 
Collet,  the  loveliness  that  blessed  the  earth  where  she  walked, 
her  death -bed,  and  her  dying  words. 

Hell  overdid  itself;  the  miasma  of  temptation  was  lifted 
and  Inglesant  and  Lauretta  were  saved. 

In  Hardy's  novels  hell  never  overdoes  itself;  it  knows 
just  how  far  to  go  in  tone  setting  to  determine  that  a  man 


334  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

and  a  woman  under  such  circumstances  as  Inglesant  and 
Lauretta  can  not  escape,  since  they  are  integral  parts  of 
the  whole  devilish  machinery  of  tone  setting  and  must 
conform  and  move  to  its  inexorable  pressure.  Hardy 
had  been  publishing  novels  for  ten  years  prior  to  Short- 
house's  John  Inglesant  and  he  has  continued  to  write 
fiction  to  A  Changed  Man,  and  Other  Tales  (19 13),  but  no 
religion  save  that  of  antagonistic  nature  has  crept  into  his 
major  volumes  and  no  vision  of  a  Little  Gidding  Chapel 
or  of  a  Mary  Collet  glides  in  to  save  his  victims  wriggling 
in  the  net  of  blind  necessity.  One  could  say  even  if  such  a 
vision  had,  it  would  have  proved  ineffectual  in  saving  the 
situation;  for  always  in  any  moonlighted  forest  of  Hardy's 
on  the  tips  of  boughs  sit  faint  cloven  tongues. 

The  philosophy  in  the  Hardy-Caine  fiction  is  the  non- 
religious  spirit  that  animates  its  heroines  and  heroes  caus- 
ing them  to  voice  such  sentiment  as : 

How  I  have  lived  and  tried  to  be  a  splendid  woman,  and 
how  Destiny  has  been  against  me.  I  do  not  deserve  my  lot. 
Oh,  the  cruelty  of  putting  me  into  this  bad,  ignorant,  stupid 
world!  I  was  capable  of  much:  but  I  have  been  injured  and 
blighted  and  crushed  by  things  beyond  my  control, 

and 

There  are  moments  when  life  seems  like  the  blind  swirl  of  a 
bat  in  the  dusk,  irresponsible,  not  to  be  counted  with,  the 
swift  creature  of  evil  chance.  We  see  a  little  child's  white 
face  at  a  hospital  window, — the  innocent  suffering  with  the 
guilty.     What,  after  all,  is  God  doing  in  this  His  world? 

And  the  evil  breezes  that  move  the  tips  of  boughs  in  the 
forest  at  Little  Hintock  in  Hardy's  The  Woodlanders 
(1887)  blow  hard  in  Phillpotts's  The  Three  Brothers  (1909) 
upon  Shaugh  Moor,  Hen  Tor,  and  the  combes  of  Dart- 
moor, Devonshire,  and  shake  in  storm  the  foliage  of  trees 


Hardy,  Caine,  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward    335 

to  proclaim  elemental  strife  in  Nature  that  seems  to  say 
that  it  was  natural  for  Humphrey  Baskerville's  son  Mark 
to  have  hanged  himself  at  the  end  of  the  tenor-bell  rope 
for  love  of  Cora  Lintern,  and  that  Priscilla  Lintern  should 
have  been  secretly  a  mistress  of  Nathan  Baskerville's  for 
thirty  years.  All  that  the  terrible  old  man  Humphrey,  of 
Hawk  House,  who  is  one  with  the  setting  of  diabolical 
Dartmoor,  can  find  for  solace  as  he  stoically  endures  the 
suicide  of  son  is  the  wisdom  of  his  own  philosophic  analysis 
of  life  expressed  in:  "To  have  bred  an  immortal  soul, 
mark  you,  is  something,  even  if  it  gets  itself  damned." 
Even  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  has  felt  "the  sovereign  sway 
and  masterdom"  of  this  antitheistic  fiction  of  Hardy  and 
Hall  Caine  in  the  majority  of  her  novels.  Nature  is 
prophetic ;  it  is  instinct  with  life  that  conspires  along  with 
God  and  man  to  pelt  down  the  individual.  Mrs.  Ward  in 
Fenwick's  Career  (1906)  bids  us  drop 

tears  ...  for  this  duped,  tortured,  struggling  life  of  ours — 
for  the  "mortalia"  which  grip  all  hearts,  which  none  escape 
— pain,  and  separation,  and  remorse,  hopes  deceived,  and 
promise  mocked,  decadence  in  one's  self,  change  in  others, 
and  that  iron  gentleness  of  death  which  closes  all. 

Her  Robert  Elsmere  (1888)  rebukes  the  modern  church  for 
not  properly  handling  the  housing  problem.  In  David 
Grieve  (1892)  Louie  throws  the  remnant  of  a  maimed  life 
into  the  keeping  of  Catholicism;  and  David  in  his  sorrows 
tries  to  grasp  something  substantial  in  the  gospel  account 
of  the  resurrection,  but  all  to  no  purpose  because  of  the 
shafts  of  higher  criticism.  Helbeck  of  Bannisdale  (1898) 
and  Eleanor  (1900)  form  an  arena  in  which  Catholicism 
and  Modernity  are  combatants.  Monsignor  Robert 
Hugh  Benson  (son  of  the  late  Archbishop  of  Canterbury) 
who  died  October  19,  1914,  at  Salford,  in  Initiation  (1914) 
gives  us  another  variation  of  the  struggle  in  which  Catholi- 


336  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

cism  (atonement  by  suffering)  wins  over  a  Modernity  that 
he  thinks  secures  its  converts  by  means  of  tempting  them 
with  all  the  pleasures  of  the  sense-world.  The  Case  of 
Richard  Meynell  (191 1)  is  Mrs.  Ward's  lecture  on  Robert 
Elsmere.  It  is  a  study  of  the  Anglican  Church  arrayed 
against  the  Nonconformists.  The  Reverend  Richard  Mey- 
nell is  hostile  toward  the  political  and  religious  privileges 
of  a  close  corporation  like  the  Anglican  Church.  As  a 
Nonconformist  his  dream  of  a  church  was  ' '  a  church  of 
free  men  co-extensive  with  the  nation,  gathering  into  the 
fold  every  English  man,  woman,  and  child."  Like  Dr. 
Arnold  of  Rugby  he  strides  before  us  endeavoring  to 
pour  a  polity  of  soul  filled  with  Modernism  into  the  old 
church  bottle.  The  central  theme  of  the  novel  is  that 
brutalizing  a  man's  conscience  is  worse  than  murdering 
his  body.  As  Richard  in  the  church  arena  is  righting 
back  the  enraged  prelates,  brutalized  in  conscience  by 
having  clung  to  their  creeds,  which  are  only  chaotic 
private  opinions  that  have  always  been  the  landmarks  in 
the  church's  life,  we  feel,  since  a  surrender  means  the 
brutalization  of  his  conscience,  that  Richard  will  fare 
worse  than  his  predecessor  Robert  Elsmere.  The  good 
man  goes  down  in  the  struggle,  being  compelled  in  the  hour 
of  seeming  triumph  to  give  up  all  that  he  thought  he  had 
won  to  save  Hester  from  Meryon  in  France,  and  is  left  in 
the  possession  of  Mary  Elsmere  the  head  and  heart  cham- 
pion of  one  whose  bruised  conscience  had  not  been  brutal- 
ized or  made  elastic.  Though  defeated,  Richard  with  Mary 
as  his  wife  sees  on  the  horizon's  edge  a  future  where 
Modernism  might  be  crowned  in  the  new  church  of  faith, 
the  ideals  of  which  have  all  been  realized.  After  one  has 
closed  The  Case  of  Richard  Meynell  one  thinks  of  Mrs. 
Oliphant's  Salem  Chapel  (1863),  in  which  the  Reverend 
Vincent  was  abandoned  as  a  Dissenter  martyr  by  his  con- 
gregation at  the  moment  he  became  original,  just  when  he 


The  Jew  in  Victorian  Fiction  337 

knew  enough  about  sin  from  first-hand  contamination  to 
make  it  stick  in  the  throats  of  his  parishioners.  Mrs. 
Oliphant  in  concluding  her  study  of  the  spiritual  tragedy 
occurring  at  Carlingford  anticipates  Airs.  Ward's  view  of 
what  still  lies  ahead  of  the  Anglican  Church : 

A  Church  of  the  Future — an  ideal  corporation,  grand  and 
primitive,  not  yet  realized,  but  surely  real,  to  be  come  at  one 
day — shone  before  his  eyes,  as  it  shines  before  so  many;  but, 
in  the  meantime,  the  Nonconformist  (the  Reverend  Vincent) 
went  into  literature,  as  was  natural,  and  was,  it  is  believed  in 
Carlingford,  the  founder  of  the  Philosophical  Review,  that  new 
organ  of  public  opinion. 

George  Croly's  Salathiel  (1827)  calls  attention  to  the 
continuance  of  the  figure  of  the  Jew  in  our  fiction.  There 
had  been  the  thumb-nail  sketch  of  the  gcod  Jew  Joabin 
in  Bacon's  New  Atlantis  (1627),  and  we  have  already  noted 
the  portrait  of  the  Wandering  Jew  in  Lewis's  The  Monk 
(1795),  Mordicai,  the  English  Jew,  outwitted  by  Sir 
Terence  O'Fay  in  Maria  Edgeworth's  The  Absentee  (1812), 
Isaac  of  York  hugging  his  shekels  in  Scott's  Ivanhoe 
(1820),  and  the  evil  Jew  Kabkarra  in  Lady  Caroline 
Lamb's  Ada  Rets  (1823).  In  George  Croly's  masterpiece 
Salathiel  manoeuvres  in  evil  passions  and  vengeance. 
Disraeli  in  The  Wondrous  Tale  of  Alroy  (1833)  throws 
Alroy,  the  prince  of  captivity,  into  the  oriental  atmosphere 
of  Bagdad  of  the  twelfth  century.  Alroy  found  the  sceptre 
of  Solomon  in  the  cavern  of  Genthesma,  but  he  dis- 
appointed the  expectation  of  his  race  and  incurred  at- 
tempted assassination  at  the  hands  of  the  prophetess 
Esther,  who  was  disgusted  with  the  man  who  had  flung 
away  the  sacred  sceptre  for  worldly  power  as  Caliph  to 
reign  with  his  princess, — the  Rose  of  the  World.  There 
finally  came  the  inevitable  fall  which  was  followed  by 
torture  and  decapitation.     Alroy,  when  he  might  have 


338  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

built  a  new  Jerusalem,  deserted  Israel  for  false  power  and  a 
woman's  kisses.  In  1844  in  Coningsby  appeared  the  good 
Sidonia  of  utmost  wisdom  whom  Lord  Beaconsfield  created 
for  the  pattern  of  the  perfect  Israelites  to  be  delineated 
as  George  Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  and  Mordecai  in  1876. 
The  supposed  nephew  of  Sir  Hugo  Mallinger's  who  has 
the  attributes  of  Disraeli's  Sidonia  is  the  ideal  man  all 
Israelites  and  Gentiles  should  be.  Daniel  Deronda  is  the 
exponent  of  George  Eliot's  orthodox  Judaism  which  looks 
to  Palestine  as  a  future  Belgium,  an  arbitration  point 
and  buffer  between  the  East  and  West,  when  a  new 
Jerusalem  shall  be  restored  by  the  Jews  who  stand  for 
separateness. 

It  was  in  1827,  the  year  after  Disraeli's  Vivian  Grey  had 
appeared,  that  Bulwer's  Falkland  was  published  which  is 
too  Wertherian.  It  was  a  tale  the  morality  of  which  made 
Bulwer's  experienced  judgment  condemn  it  so  that  he 
never  sanctioned  its  being  reprinted  during  his  lifetime. 
In  its  romantic,  Gothic  plot  indolent,  handsome,  chestnut- 
haired  Falkland  passionately  loves  beautiful,  dark-eyed 
Emily  Mandeville,  a  young  married  woman,  to  whom  he 
lends  Maturin's  Melmoth  and  whom  he  Melmoth-like 
resolves  to  lure  to  ruin.  Falkland  and  Emily  at  half-an- 
hour  past  midnight  consummate  their  guilty  passion ;  and 
when,  upon  returning  home,  Emily  is  confronted  by  her 
husband  the  blood-vessel  that  had  broken  before  now 
bursts  again  causing  her  instant  death.  To  Falkland  upon 
returning  that  night  to  his  bed  there  appears  a  ghost  with 
lip  trickling  blood ;  it  is  that  of  Emily,  whom  he  had  pol- 
luted and  had  destined  to  carry  from  her  husband  and  son 
to  a  Tuscan  heaven.  Bulwer  by  means  of  the  blessed 
blood-vessel  keeps  Emily  from  repentance  and  conceals 
her  guiltiest  secret  and  buries  it  with  her,  and  avers  that 
"her  virtues  are  yet  recorded  in  the  memories  of  the 
Poor."     Unrepentant  Falkland  still  loves  Emily  to  the 


Bulwer's  "Falkland"  and  "Pelham"   339 

death  that  meets  him  in  Spain  as  he  is  fighting  for  the 
constitutionalists.  Thus  it  can  be  readily  seen  how  the 
English  public  in  1827  regarded  Falkland  as  more  harmful 
than  Disraeli's  Vivian  Grey.  As  a  contrast  to  Falkland 
in  the  next  novel  Pelham  (1828)  Bulwer  thrust  between  its 
covers  a  character  of  sentimental  gaity.  Bulwer  wanted 
to  have  his  major  character  a  clever  man  corrupted  by  the 
world  as  we  have  seen  in  Mackenzie's  The  Man  of  the 
World,  Moore's  Zeluco,  and  Richardson's  Clarissa  Har- 
lowe.  In  other  words,  Henry  Pelham  is  intended  to  be  a 
gay  Lovelace  who,  however,  always  by  the  process  of 
clever  corruption  is  to  be  continually  evolved  into  a  better 
character.  Bulwer  endeavored  to  show  that  a  young 
man,  with  Pelham's  foibles,  corrupted  by  society,  does  not 
invariably  become  a  misanthrope.  By  means  of  a  nar- 
rative romance  constructed  according  to  the  plan  set  by 
Smollett,  Fielding,  Le  Sage,  and  with  no  purloinings  from 
Scott,  Bulwer  tried  to  end  what  he  called  "the  Satanic 
mania"  which  was  making  young  men  bilious  and  yellow- 
necked  as  they  played  the  role  of  the  Corsair  and  acquired 
mawkish  vices.  Bulwer  presented  to  the  young  man  of 
England  Sir  Reginald  Glanville  and  Henry  Pelham,  desir- 
ing that  the  youthful  reader  should  shun  the  Byronic 
Glanville  and  cleave  to  the  foibles  of  Pelham.  All  the 
women  in  the  novel  are  fond  of  oyster  pates  or  Lord 
Byron's  Corsair.  Such  high  living  produces  disastrous 
results.  Gertrude  Douglas  in  ruin  and  madness  fares 
worse  than  Clarissa  Harlowe.  Tyre  11  is  the  Lovelace,  but 
Glanville  is  no  better.  Pelham  marries  Ellen,  the  sister 
of  Glanville.  The  lot  of  Glanville  is  to  die  tragically  after 
the  celebration  of  the  marriage  of  his  sister  to  Pelham ;  and 
his  last  wish  is  to  be  buried  by  the  side  of  Gertrude  Doug- 
las, one  tombstone  covering  both.  Glanville  is  always 
good  when  there  is  a  graveyard  Gothically  back  of  him. 
And  the  inset  story,  which  was  padded  into  Pelham  from 


340  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

an  earlier  piece  of  fiction  written  by  Bulwer  entitled 
Mortimer;  or  Memoirs  of  a  Gentleman,  shows  the  essence 
of  style,  which  Bulwer  was  never  able  to  get  away  from 
the  remainder  of  his  career,  and  which  relegated  him 
always  to  a  position  a  little  less  than  the  greatest  of  the 
English  novelists.  This  inset  story  of  the  history  of  Sir 
Reginald  Glanville  is  good,  especially  the  mad  scene;  but 
this  mad  scene  is  in  better  condition  as  it  stands  in  the 
original  and  therefore  I  will  quote  it  from  Mortimer;  or  the 
Memoirs  of  a  Gentleman,  where  Ellen  Morland  is  drugged 
by  Mortimer  and  is  afterwards  taken  to  a  private  mad- 
house to  which  Mortimer  in  anguish  comes  to  see  the 
wreck  of  her  whom  he  had  purposed  to  ruin.  After  hear- 
ing shrieks  silenced  by  the  lash,  a  doctor  opens  the  door 
and  Mortimer  tells  the  rest. 

Oh,  God!  who  but  myself  could  have  recognized  her!  Her 
long  and  raven  hair  fell  over  her  face  in  wild  disorder;  she 
put  it  aside ;  her  cheek  was  as  the  cheek  of  the  dead ;  the  hue- 
less  skin  clung  to  the  bone;  her  eye  was  dull;  not  a  ray  of 
intellect  illumined  its  glance;  she  looked  long  at  me.  "I  am 
very  cold,"  she  said,  "but  if  I  complain  you  will  beat  me": 
she  fell  down  again  upon  the  straw  and  wept.  ...  I  did  not 
stay  longer  in  the  room.  I  bribed  the  doctor  to  allow  me  to 
carry  my  victim  to  my  home.  Night  and  day  for  six  weeks  I 
was  by  her  side;  she  knew  me  not — Not  till  one  night;  the 
moon,  which  was  at  its  full,  shone  into  the  chamber — we  were 
alone — she  turned  her  face  to  me — and  a  bright  ray  shot 
across  her  eye  and  played  in  smiles  upon  her  lip.  "  It  is  over, " 
she  said,  "God  forgive  you,  Henry  Mortimer,  as  I  do!" 
I  caught  her  in  my  arms.  I  am  choking  at  this  moment  with 
the  recollection — I  can  not  tell  you — you  can  guess! — We 
buried  her  that  week  by  the  side  of  her  mother. 

Thus  we  see  how  stuff  made  by  Richardson,  Sterne, 
Mackenzie,  Lewis,  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  was  carried  on  by 


Bulwer's  "Disowned"  and  "Devereux"  341 

Bulwer  into  nineteenth  century  fiction ;  and  Letitia  Lan- 
don  was  to  carry  some  of  it  as  far  as  to  when  Dickens 
began  to  write  and  later.  Pelham  at  its  best  is  a  piece  of 
Horatian  coxcombry  which  was  produced  as  a  direct  result 
of  Disraeli's  Vivian  Grey.  In  Disowned  (1829),  as  in  all 
of  Bulwer's  earlier  fiction,  there  is  an  outburst  of  such 
metaphysical  rhapsody  as  this : 

For  them,  Nature  unfolds  her  hoarded  poetry  and  her 
hidden  spells:  for  their  steps  are  the  lonely  mountains,  and  the 
still  woods  have  a  murmur  for  their  ears :  for  them  there  is 
strange  music  in  the  wave,  and  in  the  whispers  of  the  light 
leaves,  and  the  rapture  in  the  voices  of  the  birds;  their  souls 
drink,  and  are  saturated  with  the  mysteries  of  the  Universal 
Spirit,  which  the  philosophy  of  old  times  believed  to  be  God 
himself.  They  look  upon  the  sky  with  a  gifted  vision,  and  its 
dove-like  quiet  descends  and  overshadows  their  hearts:  the 
Moon  and  the  Night  are  to  them  wells  of  Castalian  inspiration 
and  golden  dreams;  and  it  was  one  of  them,  who,  gazing  upon 
the  Evening  Star,  felt  in  the  inmost  sanctuary  of  his  soul,  its 
mysterious  harmonies  with  his  worshipped  hope,  his  most 
passionate  desire,  and  dedicated  it  to — Love. 

The  time  of  the  novel  is  the  eighteenth  century,  and  the 
scene  is  in  England  prior  to  the  French  Revolution.  The 
theme  of  interest  is  Wolfe  vs.  Lord  Ulswater,  or  Democ- 
racy vs.  Aristocracy.  The  slight  enveloping  action  is 
politics,  but  the  literati  are  floated  in  the  personages 
meant  to  represent  Samuel  Johnson,  Boswell,  Goldsmith, 
and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  the  artist.  In  Devereux  (1829) 
in  the  eighteenth  century  is  depicted  Abbe  Montreuil,  the 
Jesuitic  villain,  who  pits  brother  against  brother,  thus 
well-nigh  ruining  Morton  Devereux,  whose  beautiful  wife 
Isora  is  sacrificed  for  the  benefit  of  the  order  of  Loyola. 
In  London  of  the  time  of  Queen  Anne  the  hero  Devereux 
has  his  round  of  pleasure,  meeting  at  times  the  beau-rake 


342  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Colley  Cibber,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  and  at  Will's  Coffee- 
house Dick  Steele,  Addison,  and  the  Duchess  of  Cleve- 
land's Beau  Fielding.  He  listens  to  the  toasts  at  the 
Kit-Cat  Club ;  sees  St.  John  in  power  hating  Harley,  who  is 
in  his  way ;  is  absorbed  by  Dr.  Swift's  conversation ;  and 
gazes  upon  Alexander  Pope  behind  Lady  Mary  at  the 
theatre.  Then  Morton  goes  to  France  to  see  Louis  XIV, 
Massillon  the  preacher,  Anthony  Hamilton,  Fontenelle, 
Voltaire,  and  Madame  de  Maintenon;  in  Russia  he 
observes  Peter  the  Great  and  Catherine;  and  in  Italy 
among  the  Apennines  finds  his  brother  Aubrey,  the  hermit, 
who  explains  everything  in  the  unnatural  plot  that  had 
involved  Morton  in  tragedy.  In  this  novel  Bulwer  spreads 
a  fog  over  the  historical  which  afterwards  was  lifted  by 
Thackeray  to  reveal  such  beauties  as  greet  us  on  the  pages 
of  Esmond  (1852).  The  episode  of  a  visit  to  Alexander 
Pope  in  his  grotto  is  enlarged  upon  by  Letitia  Landon  in 
Ethel  Churchill;  or  the  Two  Brides  (1837),  the  enveloping 
action  of  which  is  the  times  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole  and  his 
circle.  Paul  Clifford  (1830)  and  Eugene  Aram  (1832), 
which  had  such  an  influence  on  Ainsworth,  were  written  in 
the  ink  of  Juvenal.  The  subsequent  novels  of  Bulwer  can 
be  grouped  into  the  historical,  such  as  The  Last  Days  of 
Pompeii  (1834),  The  Last  °f the  Barons  (1843),  and  Harold 
(1848),  which  prove  him  to  be  a  romanticist,  weakly 
imitating  Scott;  the  political  such  as  Ernest  Maltr avers 
(1837)  and  Alice;  or  the  Mysteries  (1838) ;  the  realistically 
domestic  such  as  The  Caxtons  (1849)  and  My  Novel  (1853) 
which  show  the  influence  of  Sterne ;  and  such  as  A  Strange 
Story  (1862)  and  the  short  story  The  Haunted  and  the 
Haunters  (1859)  in  which  is  the  halo  of  mysticism  and  the 
supernatural  early  irridescent  in  Zicci  (1838),  that  was 
later  expanded  into  Zanoni  (1842). 

The  atmosphere  of  the  first  twelve  chapters  of  Ernest 
Maltravers  is  anticipatory  of  that  which  Dickens  used  in 


Bulvver's  "Ernest  Maltravers"  343 

his  novels  from  1838  to  1841 .  Little  Alice  Darvil  has  been 
brought  up  in  the  association  of  such  vice  as  benetted 
Oliver  Twist  at  Fagin's,  and  somehow  in  her  father's  house 
has  maintained  the  purity  of  a  Little  Nell.  She  saves 
Ernest  from  being  murdered  by  her  father;  but  to  escape 
capture  and  a  possible  death  from  her  father  she  throws 
herself  into  the  keeping  of  Maltravers,  and  in  her  inno- 
cence at  no  time  understands  the  meaning  of  the  illicit  love 
meted  out  to  her  by  Maltravers.  Little  Alice  is  only  an 
exemplifier  of  the  aphorism  "Seduction  of  love  hardly 
ever  conducts  to  a  life  of  vice."  The  difference  between 
Bulwer  and  Dickens  can  at  once  be  understood  when  we 
ponder  over  the  questions :  Why  did  not  Dickens  permit  a 
similar  fate  to  overtake  Little  Nell  in  her  grandfather's 
shop  or  later  when  on  her  wreary  wanderings?  Who  could 
have  taken  advantage  of  such  angelic  purity?  Why  was 
no  aristocratic  Maltravers  created  for  Little  Nell  by 
Charles  Dickens  in  Old  Curiosity  Shop  ?  It  is  too  dreadful 
even  to  contemplate  Little  Nell  as  a  fallen  girl ;  but  if  she 
had  fallen,  would  she  not  have  acted  much  like  Bulwer's 
Alice,  who  never  fell  again  and  ultimately  after  years  of 
suffering  and  atonement  married  her  seducer,  who  never 
had  abandoned  her  or  the  hope  of  finding  her?  Would 
Dickens  have  cut  his  throat  before  he  would  have  had 
happen  to  Little  Nell  what  Bulwer  determined  to  have 
happen  to  little  Alice  Darvil  ?  Why  did  Dickens  in  David 
Copperfield  (1849-50)  give  to  aristocratic  Steerforth  beau- 
tiful little  Emily  who,  however,  did  not  marry  her  seducer, 
but  survived  his  death  to  find  a  haven  of  rehabilitation 
in  Australia? 

Bulwer's  novels  are  sometimes  tawdrily  cheap;  the  situ- 
ations are  exaggerated;  motivation  is  overstrained;  and 
the  characters  grope  about  in  an  atmosphere  of  artificial 
morality.  Theatrical  effect  demands  that  truth  to  life  be 
sacrificed.     The  body  of  his  fiction  is  like  a  top,  which  is 


344  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

in  constant  danger  of  falling  flat  by  reason  of  unconvincing 
characterization  and  grandiloquent  phraseology  of  dia- 
logue gyrating  about  on  the  pin-point  of  sensational  situ- 
ation. Bulwer  whipped  his  fiction  into  action  with  the 
sentiment  of  a  wobbling,  gyrating  public.  Bulwer  fre- 
quently broke  away  from  the  rigidity  of  the  stratifications 
of  Richardson,  Sterne,  and  Mackenzie,  because  there  was 
moral  protest  or  perhaps  mental  reaction  on  the  part  of 
the  public  against  the  eighteenth  century  form  of  fiction- 
making.  He  frequently  broke  away  from  Disraeli,  from 
Scott,  to  flee  back  to  Sterne,  and  to  the  supernatural. 
At  times  he  escaped  from  all,  but  he  never  could  escape 
from  himself;  for,  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts,  his  fiction 
reflected  the  insincere,  emotional  public  which  clamored 
so  hungrily  for  it.  One  must  make  allowance  then  for 
Bulwer  by  taking  into  consideration  the  period  of  readjust- 
ment that  was  going  on  in  the  days  of  his  fiction-writing. 
And  after  a  man  has  done  this  he  will  salute  with  more 
respect  this  greatest  acrobat  of  adjustment  and  readjust- 
ment who  felt  compelled  to  go  through  his  antics  to  please 
a  public  that  did  not  know  that  a  period  of  readjustment 
was  going  on.  There  were  times  when  the  sentimental 
public  were  absolutely  sure  that  he  was  the  coming  novel- 
ist, who  would  in  time  be  hailed  as  greater  than  either 
Dickens  or  Thackeray.  He  was  able  to  forge  ahead  of 
Disraeli,  but  Bill  Sikes  and  Steerforth,  Barry  Lyndon  and 
Lord  Steyne,  must  have  been  revealments  to  him  of  the 
impassable  gulf  that  lay  between  the  romantic  world,  in 
which  moved  his  own  puppet-criminals,  Paul  Clifford  and 
Eugene  Aram,  and  that  realistic  world,  in  which  moved 
the  humanized  criminals  created  by  Dickens  and  Thack- 
eray. Bulwer  could  not  instill  personality  into  characters ; 
he  went  to  other  novelists  to  borrow  this  elixir  vita.  What 
man  ever  stopped  an  individual  on  the  street  to  say,  "  Do 
you  see  that  old  fellow  over  there?     He  reminds  me  of  Za- 


Bulwer's  "The  Caxtons"  345 

noni.  He  not  only  looks  like  Zanoni,  but  he  acts  like  him. " 
There  are  only  two  characters  of  Bulwer's  whom  you  feel 
as  if  you  had  met  in  real  life.  You  are  not  so  sure  about 
it,  but  you  venture  to  say,  "Those  two  old  fellows  over 
there  remind  me  of  the  genial  Caxton  brothers."  But 
the  man  on  the  street  surprises  you  by  replying,  "No. 
You  are  mistaken.  Those  old  fellows  over  there  remind 
me  of  Uncle  Toby  and  Corporal  Trim!" 

In  speaking  of  Bulwer  as  a  second-rate  novelist  of 
first-rate  importance  there  come  back  to  me  the  memories 
of  the  summer  of  1898,  when  I  was  privileged  to  have  a 
pleasant  afternoon  chat  with  General  Lew  Wallace  on  the 
porch  of  his  old  home  in  the  city  of  my  nativity.  Natur- 
ally the  causerie  was  about  books  with  an  occasional 
digression  to  the  war  which  we  were  carrying  on  at  that 
time  with  Spain.  That  afternoon  the  old  General  told  me 
that  he  considered  Longfellow's  The  Building  of  the  Ship 
as  the  greatest  American  poem,  that  Emma  Lazarus  was 
our  greatest  poetess,  and  that  Ivanhoe  and  The  Bride  of 
Lammermoor  were  the  greatest  of  Scott's  novels.  And 
while  speaking  of  Scott  he  suddenly  veered  in  a  wrathful 
change  of  voice  to  discuss  the  mistake  Americans  had 
recently  been  making  in  feting  and  dining  on  their  shores 
a  certain  Anthony  Hope  Hawkins  whose  only  merit  had 
been  in  producing  a  poor  piece  of  fiction  called  The  Prisoner 
of  Zenda.  Lew  Wallace  believed  that  Anthony  Hope  was 
receiving  honors  far  beyond  those  which  he  deserved, 
and  I  can  never  forget  the  satisfied  look  on  the  General's 
face  as  he  said,  "We  have  not  had  any  great  novels  since 
Bulwer  and  Dickens."  From  his  further  talk  about 
Bulwer  I  found  out  that  back  of  the  birth  of  the  chariot- 
race  in  Ben  Hur  was  the  strength  of  Bulwer's  arena-scene 
in  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  and  that  back  of  the  birth  of 
the  scenic  power  in  The  Fair  God  was  the  inspiration  which 
had  come  to  him  from  reading  the  younger  Maturin's 


346  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Malmistic,  the  Last  of  the  Toltecs,  which  from  my  boyhood 
days  I  can  recall  as  holding  me  from  first  page  to  last  as  I 
followed  the  thrilling  adventures  of  the  prince,  the  lawful 
heir  to  the  throne  of  the  Aztecs,  along  the  shores  of  Lake 
Tezcuco  and  in  the  beautiful  city  of  Tenochtitlan. 

I  came  away  from  the  gray-haired  General  that  golden 
afternoon  feeling  that  in  Ben  Hur  it  was  to  Bulwer  he  had 
turned  and  that  I  was  never  to  forget  an  Arbaces  in  the  act 
of  saving  himself  from  the  lions  in  the  amphitheatre  by 
pointing  to  the  cloud  shaped  like  a  pine-tree  floating  over 
Vesuvius  or  this  Egyptian  priest  and  prince  as  he  was 
struck  down  by  the  column  broken  by  the  electrical  pheno- 
mena at  the  moment  Glaucus  deemed  lone  as  good  as  lost 
to  him  forever  in  the  subtle  arch-villain's  arms.  Nor  was  I 
to  forget  blind  Nydia's  awful  mistake  in  trying  to  force 
Glaucus  to  love  her  by  means  of  a  love-potion,  nor  her 
subsequent  angelic  sacrifice  in  saving  Glaucus  and  lone; 
therefore,  to-day,  even  when  I  see  these  characters  dancing 
before  me  in  a  photoplay,  I  try  to  readjust  my  opinion  of 
this  author  so  as  to  come  to  Lew  Wallace's  conclusion 
that  we  have  not  had  any  novels  since  Bulwer  and  Dickens. 

Between  Bulwer's  Pelham  (1828)  and  the  publication 
of  Charles  Dickens's  A  Dinner  at  Poplar  Walk  (in  The 
Monthly  Magazine  for  December  1833),  there  appeared 
James  Morier's  Hajji  Baba  in  England  (1828)  and  Zohrab 
the  Hostage  (1832);  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall's  Sketches  of  Irish 
Character  (1829);  Gerald  Griffin's  The  Collegians  (1829) 
and  The  Invasion  (1832);  Michael  Scott's  Tom  Cringles 
Log  (1829);  G.  P.  R.  James's  Richelieu  (1829);  William 
Carleton's  Father  Butler  and  The  Lough  Derg  Pilgrim 
(1829),  Traits  and  Stories  of  Irish  Peasantry  (1830); 
Frederick  Marryat's  Frank  Mildmay;  or,  the  Naval  Officer 
(1829)  and  Newton  Forster  (1832);  Theodore  Hook's 
Maxwell  (1830) ;  Letitia  E.  Landon's  Romance  and  Reality 
(1831);  and  Robert  Smith  Surtees's  New  Sporting  Maga- 


Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall's  "Sketches"  347 

zine  (1832-34)  in  which  were  portrayed  the  adventures  of 
the  cockney  grocer  Jorrocks  which  served  to  help  the  plan 
of  Dickens's  Pickwick  Papers  (1836-37),  and  which  later 
were  put  in  book  form  under  the  title  of  Jorrocks' s  Jaunts 
and  Jollities  (1838). 

Morier's  Hajji  Baba  in  England  and  Zohrab,  the  Hostage 
were  two  oriental  passage-ways  leading  one  from  the  fine 
temple  of  Hajji  Baba  of  Ispahan  (1824)  to  that  of  Ayesha, 
Maid  of  Kars  (1834).     Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall  kept  the  Irishman 
alive  in  the  twenty-eight  sketches  that  serve  to  connect 
the    Lady    Morgan-Banim-Griffin   fiction   with    that    of 
Carleton,   Lover,  and  Lever.     In   The  Last  of  the  Line 
Sir  John  Clavis,  of  Trinity  College,  marries  a  Spanish 
beauty,  a  Catholic,  and  later  becomes  an  Orangeman ;  he 
clashes  with  Denny  Dacey,  the  agent,  who  is  squander- 
ing the  revenues  of  the  estate.     There  follows  a  duel  in 
which  Clavis  is  killed.     "The  party  shall  fail  by  Clavis 
led  /  And  none  of  the  name  shall  die  in  their  bed. "     The 
story  is  written  according  to  Maria  Edgeworth's  con- 
ception of  the  villainy  of  agents.      Jack  the  Shrimp  is 
written  in  the  manner  of  the  modified  pathos  permeating 
Miss  Mitford's  Our  Village.     In  Black  Dennis  the  United 
Irishman,  who  has  been  found  to  be  a  traitor,  is  dying  in 
the  dwelling  on  the  "far  moor,"  and  his  wife,  Anne  Dennis, 
braves  the  wintry  night  to  ask  Michael  Leahey  to  go  for 
a  priest.     Later  her  child,  innocent,  harmless  Ned,  in  the 
Leahey  cottage  looks  up  at  the  window  and  sees  a  banshee 
at  the  time  his  mother's  ghost  flits  by.     The  Rapparee 
contains  a  character  sketch  that  is  reminiscent  of  that 
given  the  rapparee,  the  foster-brother  of  the  hero  in  The 
O'Briens  and  the  0' Flaherty s  of  Lady  Morgan's.    And 
Mabel  0' Neil's  Curse  presents  a  magistrate  caught  by  the 
woman  whose  ruin  he  had  caused.    James  Johnson  at  the 
bar  of  justice  must  confront  a  son  as  well  as  a  discarded 
sweetheart  of  the  years  that   have   sped.      Mabel   the 


348  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

wronged  woman  saves  her  son  from  murdering  his  father, 
the  magistrate  Johnson.  The  story  is  slightly  reminiscent 
of  the  most  pathetic  scene  in  Mrs.  Inchbald's  Nature  and 
Art.  "The  best  way  to  keep  off  a  curse  is  not  to  desarve 
it." 

Now  what  can  we  say  in  praise  of  Michael  Scott,  of 
Glasgow,  who,  probably  among  the  Blue  Mountains  of 
Jamaica,  remembering  Smollett's  Roderick  Random  and 
Peregrine  Pickle  and  his  own  adventurous  experiences 
by  sea  and  land,  penned  Tom  Cringle's  Log.  There  is  the 
coarse  humor  of  Smollett's  used  in  depicting  Cringle's 
plight  at  Kingston,  Jamaica,  when  he  slips  on  the  ma- 
hogany floor  splitting  his  lower  canvas  and  is  petticoated 
by  beautiful  Mary  prior  to  a  general  introduction  to  the 
tittering  Creole  ladies.  Then  there  is  the  delightful  in- 
troduction by  means  of  caricature  to  Obed,  the  American 
pirate.  Who  does  not  think  of  Smollett's  Obadiah  Lis- 
mahago  when  Scott  says  of  Obed  that 

he  had  absolutely  no  body,  his  bottom  being  placed  between 
his  shoulders,  but  what  was  wanted  in  corpus  was  made  up 
in  legs,  indeed  he  looked  like  a  pair  of  compasses,  buttoned 
together  at  the  shoulders,  and  supporting  a  yellow  phiz, 
half-a-yard  long,  thatched  with  a  fell  of  sandy  hair,  falling 
down  lank  and  greasy  on  each  side  of  his  face? 

And  can  one  fail  to  think  of  Commodore  Trunnion,  when 
later  as  a  prisoner  on  Obed's  boat  Cringle  gazes  on  the 
Yankee  pirate,  the  only  man  on  deck,  who  is  looking  at 
the  schooner  and  the  corvette,  the  Firebrand,  through  the 
magnifying  monocle  as  by  magnificent  manoeuvres  at  the 
tiller  he  is  skilfully  outclassing  and  evading  his  pursuers? 
Then  caricature  is  discarded  as  Scott  frames  Obed  in  a 
picture  of  pathos  prior  to  his  being  shot  to  death  in  the 
water  in  the  rendezvous  of  the  pirates.  The  ghost  of 
Obed  haunts  Cringle  throughout  the  remaining  pages  of 


Scott's  "Tom  Cringle's  Log"  349 

the  novel.  The  first  half  of  Torn  Cringle's  Log  is  almost 
as  exciting  as  the  first  half  of  Stevenson's  Treasure  Island; 
for  the  Stevensonian  atmosphere  hovers  everywhere  over 
pirates.  It  seems  to  me  that  Treasure  Island  abates  in 
interest  as  soon  as  Jim  Hawkins,  the  Squire,  the  Doctor, 
and  the  pirates  under  Captain  Silver,  rush  into  the  boats  to 
see  who  can  reach  the  stockade  first.  This  shift  from  sea 
to  island  is  absolutely  necessary,  but  it  produces  the  tor- 
tuous in  plot  which  is  passing  strange  when  it  is  recalled 
how  back  in  England  with  bated  breath  we  watched  Jim's 
party  and  Silver's  swept  along  in  the  thrillingly  natural 
incidents  of  an  orderly  narrative.  The  pellmell  tactics 
of  both  parties  on  the  island  in  the  Spanish  Main  produce 
only  one  great  scene,  and  to  create  it  Stevenson  is  com- 
pelled to  go  to  sea  again  in  a  coracle  in  order  that  Jim  may 
clamber  up  on  to  the  bowsprit  of  the  Hispaniola  to  have 
his  great  fight  with  Israel  Hands.  And  in  Tom  Cringle's 
Log  after  the  death  of  Obed  there  is  disappointment  as  one 
feels  the  jarring  shift  of  interest  from  Obed  to  Aaron 
Bang,  from  a  sea-dog  to  a  land-dog,  fond  of  "high  jinks" 
and  a  midnight  lark.  The  shift  is  one  that  moves  from 
the  pathos  about  Obed  to  the  humor  around  Bang — and 
Cringle  is  bundled  into  the  keeping  of  Aaron  in  the  last 
half  of  the  volume  to  be  enveloped  in  cigar  smoke  and  to 
be  tickled  by  episodes  modeled  after  the  manner  of  that 
which  describes  how  Bang  is  stung  on  his  big  red  nose  by  a 
scorpion.  In  the  last  half  occasionally  there  intrudes  the 
pathetic,  but  it  is  flavored  with  the  Gothic,  as  when  Maria, 
the  pirate's  leman,  crimsoning  her  own  fair  flesh  with 
arterial  blood,  dies  to  the  tune  of  thunder,  and  as  when, 
after  the  action  with  the  slaver,  and  after  shooting  one 
half  of  the  survivors  as  they  swim  to  be  taken  on  board 
in  the  blood-red  beams  of  a  glorious  sunset,  Cringle 
and  his  confreres  from  the  deck  of  the  Wave  watch  the 
slaver-brig  go  down : 


35°  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

The  fire  increased — her  guns  went  off  as  they  became 
heated — she  gave  a  sudden  heel — and  while  five  hundred 
human  beings,  pent  up  in  her  noisome  hold,  split  the  heavens 
with  their  piercing  death-yells,  down  she  went  with  a  heavy 
lurch,  head  foremost,  right  in  the  wake  of  the  setting  sun, 
whose  level  rays  made  the  thick  dun  wreaths  that  burst  from 
her  as  she  disappeared,  glow  with  the  hue  of  the  amethyst; 
and  while  the  whirling  clouds,  gilded  by  his  dying  radiance, 
called  up  into  the  blue  sky,  in  rolling  masses,  growing  thinner 
and  thinner,  until  they  vanished  away,  even  like  the  wreck 
whereout  they  arose — and  the  circling  eddies  created  by  her 
sinking,  no  longer  sparkled  and  flashed  in  the  red  light, — 
and  the  stilled  waters  where  she  had  gone  down,  as  if  oil  had 
been  cast  on  them,  were  spread  out  like  polished  silver,  shining 
like  a  mirror,  while  all  around  was  dark  blue  ripple, — a  puff 
of  fat  black  smoke,  denser  than  any  we  had  yet  seen,  suddenly 
emerged  with  a  loud  gurgling  noise,  from  out  the  deep  bosom 
of  the  calmed  sea, and  rose  like  a  balloon, rolling  slowly  upwards 
until  it  reached  a  little  way  above  our  mast-heads,  where  it 
melted  and  spread  out  into  a  dark  pall,  that  overhung  the 
scene  of  death,  as  if  the  incense  of  such  a  horrible  and  pol- 
luted sacrifice  could  not  ascend  into  the  pure  heaven,  but  had 
been  again  crushed  back  upon  our  devoted  heads,  as  a  palpable 
manifestation  of  the  wrath  of  Him  who  hath  said — "Thou 
shalt  not  kill." 

It  is  now  nearly  thirty-five  years  ago  since  I  first  read 
Tom  Cringle's  Log  which  had  been  given  my  playmate 
by  his  father  to  make  him  give  up  his  longing  to  run  away 
to  sea.  The  father  by  bestowing  the  book  sealed  his  son's 
fate;  for,  strange  to  say,  the  hardships  and  the  horrors  as 
related  by  Scott  seemed  in  no  way  to  deter  my  friend 
from  later  abandoning  his  family  for  a  life  on  the  ocean 
wave.  Scott's  The  Cruise  of  the  Midge  (1834),  a  replica 
of  Tom  Cringle's  Log,  possesses  an  excellent  bit  of  Rem- 
brandt art  in  the  picture  of  the  chase  of  the  polacre  by 
the  gallant  little  Midge: 


Scott,  Marryat,  and  Kingsley  351 

The  night  began  to  lower  again ;  the  wind  fell  from  a  fine 
working  breeze  to  nearly  calm,  and  the  rain  soon  began  to 
descend  in  torrents.  At  length  it  became  stark  calm,  and  as 
dark  as  the  shrouded  moon  would  let  it.  But  every  now  and 
then  we  could  see  a  tiny  flash  in  the  south-east,  that  for  a  mo- 
ment lit  up  the  outline  of  the  black  sail  of  the  felucca,  mak- 
ing the  sweeps  and  the  figures  of  the  men  that  pulled  them 
appear  as  black  as  ebony  between  us  and  the  flash  of  the 
forwardmost  gun,  which,  on  the  other  hand,  glanced  brightly 
against  the  stern,  sparkled  in  the  windows,  and  lighted  up 
the  snow-white  sails  of  the  brig,  in  pursuit  of  which  the 
felucca  had  again  bore  up;  the  wreaths  of  smoke  rising  and 
surrounding  both  vessels  like  a  luminous  ■  cloud  or  a  bright 
halo. 

Michael  Scott  pays  as  much  attention  to  nautical 
details  as  Cooper  or  Kipling,  but  he  has  none  of  Cooper's 
masterly  sweep  of  imagination  which  created  Long  Tom 
Coffin.  Imagination  is  sadly  lacking,  for  the  fine  de- 
scriptions, full  of  local  color  of  the  Spanish  Main,  are 
massed  together  as  a  tropical  sense-world  to  amuse  and 
arouse  anguish  in  every  reader  who  feels  that  to  physical 
and  mental  suffering  Scott  is  as  inexorable  as  Nature,  or  as 
Emily  Bronte  when  she  permits  fair  Isabella  to  pluck  the 
knife  from  behind  her  ear,  thrust  there  by  cannibal  Heath- 
cliff  and  to  flee  from  the  house  of  the  Earnshaws  never 
to  return.  Michael  Scott  shouldered  Smollett's  sea-novel 
so  that  it  could  be  carried  at  a  thorough-paced  gait  by 
Frederick  Marryat  and  his  imitators  W.  N.  Glascock, 
Frederick  Chamier,  and  James  Hannay.  The  Michael 
Scott-Marryat  fiction  was  the  connecting  link  between 
Smollett's  Roderick  Random  and  Kingsley's  Westward  Ho! 
(1855)  and  Stevenson's  Treasure  Island  (1883).  If  one 
removed  "the  always  wind-obeying  deep"  from  Westward 
Ho!  its  historical  structure  would  crumble  to  pieces.  In 
Kingsley's  masterpiece  are  the  wild  joys  of  Amyas  Leigh 


352  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

as  he  lives  spiritually  and  materially  well  in  being  tossed 
on  billows  mountain  high  and  in  feeling  compelled  to 
answer  the  call  of  an  El  Dorado  as  he  stands  beneath 
the  mighty  ceiba-tree.  Amyas,  trained  by  Sir  Francis 
Drake,  displays  his  physical  strength  as  if  a  demi-god 
were  showing  off  his  followers  to  be  fully  as  great  in  heroic 
deed  as  he  himself.  When  watching  these  Elizabethan 
sailors  in  the  spirited  sea-action  with  the  Spanish  vessels, 
resulting  in  the  sinking  of  the  Madre  Dolorosa  off  La 
Guayra,  or  at  the  nadir  of  their  fortunes  in  the  bay  of 
Higuerote  in  the  mud  beneath  the  mangrove  forest,  or 
succumbing  to  the  sense- world  of  beautiful  savage  women, 
among  whom  walks  the  white  Indian  princess  Ayacanora, 
or  coming  home  with  the  treasure  and  a  greater  treasure, 
the  beautiful  Ayacanora  the  bride-to-be  for  Amyas,  or 
fighting  with  the  Spanish  Armada  and  pursuing  Don 
Guzman  de  Sota  around  Scotland  to  the  Irish  Sea  to  the 
great  storm  and  the  lightning-flash  that  blinds  Amyas, 
then  it  is  we  know  how  the  Anglo-Saxon  can  never 
pass  through  another  Elizabethan  Renaissance;  for  the 
far-rolling  western  seas  are  no  longer  unknown,  and  the 
league-long  rollers  no  longer  lift  vessels  to  such  a  height  as 
formerly  made  English  mariners  see  the  glittering  towers 
of  El  Dorados  on  their  imaginative  horizon  line.  Eliza- 
bethan minds  were  made  by  these  wonderful  voyages  of 
discovery  almost  as  vast  in  sweep  as  the  seas  traversed. 
And  the  Polish  Joseph  Conrad  must  not  be  forgotten ;  for, 
though  foreign  to  English  traditions,  since  1894  in  Eng- 
land he  has  been  our  greatest  artist  in  visualizing  with 
precision  the  grandiose,  vague,  and  illusive  atmosphere 
of  the  seas  that  moan  and  sob  about  the  world.  In  The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus:  A  Tale  of  the  Sea  (1898)  and  in 
Lord  Jim:  A  Tale  (1900),  Conrad  realistically  and  roman- 
tically thrusts  the  weight  of  waves  against  the  eyeballs  so 
that  the  brain  rocks  as  if  it  too  were  a  ship  like  the  Patna 


Scott,  Conrad,  William  McFee  353 

in  Lord  Jim  about  to  go  to  sleep  on  the  Indian  Ocean. 
The  sea,  with  its  sailing  vessels  and  steamers,  has  almost 
reached  the  end  of  its  service  to  romantic  and  realistic 
fiction.  In  this  respect,  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
romantic  realism  of  Tom  Cringle  s  Log  with  the  sombre 
realism  of  McFee' s  Book  Three  of  The  Casuals  of  the  Sea 
(1916).  It  seems  now  that  romanticism  may  weave  itself 
about  the  submarine,  and  go  back  for  inspiration  to  Cap- 
tain Nemo  and  his  Nautilus  of  Jules  Verne's  Twenty  Thou- 
sand Leagues  Under  the  Sea  and  The  Mysterious  Island. 
The  glamor  of  romantic  life  under  the  waves  will  precede 
any  realistic  presentation  of  submarine  life  that  might  be 
entitled  The  Casuals  of  the  Under  seas. 

On  reperusing  the  list  of  the  chief  novels  published 
between  1829  and  1833  the  eye  falls  upon  Letitia  E.  Lan- 
don,  who  was  cursorily  mentioned  in  the  discussion  of 
Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe's  fiction.  In  Romance  and  Reality 
(1831)  Letitia  Landon  has  one  of  her  characters  refer  to 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroines  in  this  fashion:  "I  grew  so  tired 
of  their  undeviating  sweetness,  that  I  hoped  at  last  some 
of  the  dangers  they  encountered  would  fairly  put  an  end 
to  their  terrors,  troubles,  and  existence  together."  And 
Romance  and  Reality  bears  out  the  idea  that  Letitia  Lan- 
don was  determined  from  the  beginning  to  place  an 
auburn-tressed  heroine,  possessed  of  gray  eyes  "with 
black  pupils,"  eyelashes  curled  up,  crimson  cheeks,  a  fine 
ankle,  and  a  hand  fit  for  a  duchess,  amid  such  difficulties 
as  from  which  it  would  be  impossible  for  her  to  extricate 
herself.  The  catastrophe  is  so  complete  that  at  the  close 
of  the  novel,  after  compelling  Miss  Arundel  to  leave  all 
her  money  to  Beatrice,  of  the  lonely  woods  of  Andalusia, 
her  successful  rival,  who  gains  the  heart  of  Edward  Lor- 
raine the  hero  she  loved,  and  to  die  with  her  head  on 
Beatrice's  shoulder  and  supported  by  Edward,  Letitia 
Landon  brings  forth  the  heroine's  will  which  makes  it 


354  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

imperative  to  pull  down  Arundel  Hall  and  leave  in  the 
village  church  a  marble  tablet  on  which  is  inscribed 
"Emily  Arundel,  The  Last  Survivor  of  Her  Family, 
Aged  21."  Nothing  is  allowed  to  remain  on  earth  to 
remind  us  of  her  sorrows  except  a  picture  of  her  that  bore 
not  her  name  at  Etheringhame  Castle.  The  piece  of 
fiction  is  the  study  of  the  gradual  dissolution  of  Emily 
that  proceeds  from  the  awful  curse  the  abbess  pronounced 
upon  her  ancestor  back  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth. 
Emily  loses  her  uncle  and  friend  Lady  Alicia,  who  might 
have  brought  her  and  Edward  together  in  England,  and  is 
forced  to  abandon  Arundel  Hall  to  accept  the  hospitality 
of  Lady  Mandeville  and  a  visit  to  Italy.  At  Naples  un- 
requited love  drives  her  to  the  convent  of  St.  Valerie  to 
become  a  nun.  Within  this  nunnery  the  curse  demands 
the  added  anguish  of  finding  beautiful  Beatrice  to  listen 
from  her  lips  to  how  Edward  could  love  when  he  loved  for 
keeps.  After  being  freed  from  the  convent  when  it  is 
fired  by  Zoridos's  force,  Emily  in  England  in  Arundel 
House  must  live  to  learn  not  to  murder  Beatrice  who  is 
more  beautiful  than  herself,  but  to  love  her  so  as  to  save 
her  for  Edward  when  he  should  return ;  and  when  he  does, 
Letitia  Landon  gives  Emily  the  satisfaction  of  convulsively 
dying  in  his  arms.  And  the  reader,  if  he  hates  Radclifrlan 
heroines,  can  take  in  Emily's  life  and  death  much  secret 
satisfaction;  for  Emily  on  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  pages  would 
have  been  married  to  Edward  Lorraine  and  recovered 
her  health,  and  even  Beatrice  would  have  said,  "0  giorno 
felice!"  We  have  already  referred  to  Emily's  taking  the 
black  veil  at  St.  Valerie  when  commenting  on  Margaret's 
taking  it  in  the  Abbey  of  Gloucester  in  Thomas  Deloney's 
The  Pleasant  Historie  of  Thomas  of  Reading  and  when 
commenting  on  Vincentio's  rescuing  Ellena  as  she  was 
about  to  take  it  in  San  Stefano  in  Airs.  Radcliffe's  The 
Italian.     Letitia  Landon's  description  is  fully  as  fine  as 


L.  E.  Landon's  "Ethel  Churchill"      355 

that  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  and  its  perusal  will  amply  repay- 
any  reader. 

Letitia  Landon's  Francesco,  Carrara  (1834)  possesses  the 
scenic  background  of  Italy,  of  England  in  the  time  of 
Cromwell,  and  of  France  under  Cardinal  Mazarin.  Ro- 
bert Evelyn  loves  Francesca,  but  he  has  a  brother  Francis 
who  befools  Francesca  into  thinking  that  he  Francis  is 
Robert.  The  story  is  full  of  sensational  episodes,  especi- 
ally death-bed  scenes.  Robert  and  Francesca  are  at  last 
united  to  die  in  each  other's  arms  in  a  frightful  storm  at 
sea.  Death  in  its  sudden  and  lingering  horrors  seems  to 
fascinate  Letitia  Landon,  who  carries  such  into  Ethel 
Churchill;  or  the  Two  Brides  (1837)  in  which  we  meet 
Pope  in  his  grotto,  see  pain  inflicted  by  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagu,  and  hear  Sir  Robert  Walpole  hum- 
ming airs  from  Gay's  The  Beggar's  Opera  as  he  is  between 
two  pretty  charmers;  and  see  Lavinia  Fenton,  who  loves 
Walter  Maynard,  suffer  as  she  listens  to  his  constant 
outbursts  of  love  for  Ethel,  but  she  stays  with  him  until 
his  death,  and  then  to  forget  becomes  the  Duchess  of 
Bolton.  We  observe  Constance's  fate  is  being  married 
to  a  man  who  does  not  love  her.  At  a  public  assembly 
she  breaks  a  blood-vessel  streaking  her  fan  with  crimson. 
We  watch  Lady  Marchmont  arriving  at  the  bedside  of  her 
uncle  too  late  to  see  him  alive  and  determining,  since  her 
detested  husband  had  caused  the  delay,  to  be  mistress  of 
her  fate  by  means  of  prussic  acid  that  she  makes  out  of 
almonds;  and,  when  she  is  detected  by  her  husband  in  the 
tete-a-tete  with  her  lover  Sir  George  Kingston  at  the 
masked  ball  at  Lady  Townshend's,  by  means  of  this  prus- 
sic acid  she  kills  her  husband,  and  Sir  George,  and  then  goes 
violently  insane.  How  prophetic  some  of  this  was — when 
we  think  of  Letitia  Landon  (Mrs.  Maclean)  killing  herself 
with  prussic  acid  in  Cape  Coast  Castle,  Africa,  goaded  to 
it  in  all  probability  by  her  beast  of  a  husband.     The 


356  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

authoress  of  Romance  and  Reality  had  read  Keats  as  is 
evinced  by  her  fondness  for  quoting  him,  and  her  employ- 
ment of  his  diction  and  a  sensuous  style,  that  was  acquired 
from  her  acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  poetic  pic- 
tures of  Italian  sunsets,  woods,  and  castles,  made  her  a 
popular  novelist  in  her  day,  and  still  a  source  of  delight 
to  one  who  mourns  the  loss  of  this  kind  of  style  in  modern 
fiction.  When  Letitia  Landon  ceased  her  work  the  Bronte 
sisters  were  ready  to  continue  it,  and  to-day  the  influence 
of  the  Brontes  is  strongly  felt  in  the  fiction  of  May  Sin- 
clair, especially  in  her  The  Three  Sisters  (19 14)  in  which 
are  the  touches  of  the  gruesome  that  is  introduced  to  pro- 
duce the  effect  of  sad  fatality  enveloping  the  characters — 
such  as  the  image  of  old  Greatorex  which  Gwenda  sees 
in  the  sombre,  long  gray  house  at  Upthorne  lying  in  the 
death-bed  which  was  later  to  become  her  sister  Alice's 
marriage-bed.  The  coffin  bearing  the  same  image  later 
stuck  in  the  bend  of  the  stairs  as  it  was  being  carried  from 
the  house.  And  it  was  such  things  as  these  that  made 
timid,  little  Alice  fear  to  become  the  bride  of  young 
Greatorex  at  Upthorne. 

On  glancing  at  the  novels  from  1829  to  1833  we  realize 
that  Sir  Walter  Scott  still  had  the  historical  field  all  to 
himself.  Few  indeed  were  those  who  could  successfully 
walk  on  his  territory.  G.  P.  R.  James  by  his  Richelieu 
(1829)  foisted  into  English  fiction  the  miserable  history 
that  we  find  in  Ainsworth.  As  we  already  know  Bulwer 
circled  round  the  edge  of  the  historical  in  Disowned  (1829) 
and  Devereux  (1829) ;  but  he  was  not  to  enter  it  until  after 
his  visit  to  Italy  that  resulted  in  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii 
(1834)  and  Rienzi  (1835),  which  gave  him  courage  to 
compose  The  Last  of  the  Barons  (1843)  and  Harold  (1848). 
W.  H.  Maxwell's  Stories  of  Waterloo  (1834)  and  Bivouac  or 
Stories  of  the  Peninsular  War  (1837)  were  followed  up  by 
Lever's  Charles  O'Malley  (1840),  in  which  the  shako  and 


The  Victorian  Historical  Novel  357 

Soult's  face  seen  in  Spain  in  Thomas  Hamilton's  Cyril 
Thornton  (1827)  are  transferred  to  the  slope  of  the  plateau 
of  Mont  St.  Jean  at  Waterloo,  and  by  Tom  Burke  of  Ours 
(1844)  in  which  Tom  follows  Napoleon's  fortunes  from  the 
field  of  Austerlitz  to  his  farewell  to  the  Old  Guard  at 
Fontainebleau.  Harriet  Martineau  enlists  our  sympa- 
thies for  the  woes  of  Toussaint  L'Ouverture  in  The  Hour 
and  the  Man  (1840).  Dickens  slightly  enveloped  Barnaby 
Rudge  (1841)  with  the  history  of  the  Gordon  Riots,  and 
Emma  Robinson  supplied  a  study  of  the  Popish  Plot, 
Lord  Russell  and  Algernon  Sydney's  Conspiracy,  and  the 
Rye  House  Plot,  in  Whitefriars;  or  the  Court  of  Charles  II 
(1843)  in  which  the  Great  Fire  is  colored  finely  as  wel1  as 
the  district  Alsatia  in  which  walk  Charles  II,  Nell  Gwyn, 
Buckingham,  and  Rochester.  When  describing  the  Battle 
of  Bothwell  Brig  there  is  just  the  trace  of  a  suspicion  that 
Emma  Robinson  went  to  Scott's  Old  Mortality,  and  when 
Reginald  Aumerle  is  exposed  to  all  the  terrors  of  the 
haunted  mansion,  on  the  Thames-side,  in  which  the  miser 
had  been  killed  and  at  which  Blood  and  Titus  Oates  devise 
their  plots,  there  is  a  return  to  the  Gothic  of  Scott's  The 
Fortunes  of  Nigel.  Charles  Macfarlane's  The  Camp  of 
Refuge  (1844)  is  a  small  smoking  bonfire  that  Charles 
Kingsley  fanned  into  flames  in  Hereward  the  Wake  (1866). 
It  is  interesting  to  compare  the  Hereward  of  fact  of 
Macfarlane's  with  the  legendary,  romantic  Hereward  of 
Kingsley's.  Macfarlane  also  tried  to  apply  fact  instead 
of  imagination  to  Stephen  and  Matilda  of  the  twelfth 
century  in  Reading  Abbey  (1846).  Albert  Smith  touched 
upon  historical  romance  in  The  Marchioness  of  Brin- 
villiers  (1846);  and  G.  H.  Rodwell,  in  Old  London  Bridge 
(1849),  supplied  a  Gothic  historical  romance  of  the  times 
of  Henry  the  Eighth.  The  burning  of  London  Bridge 
and  the  thieves'  fight  in  the  Clink  serve  to  show  the  in- 
fluence of  Ainsworth.     Wilkie  Collins's  Antonina;  or  the 


358  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Fall  of  Rome  (1850)  and  Anthony  Trollope's  La  Vendee 
(1850)  were  received  with  such  disapprobation  as  to  make 
both  novelists  steer  their  ships  away  from  the  rocks  of 
the  historical. 

After  1850  better  historical  novels  were  published  such 
as  Thackeray's  Esmon d  (1852),  The  Virginians  (1857-59); 
Kingsley's  Hypatia  (1853),  Westward  Ho!  (1855),  Ilere- 
ward  the  Wake  (1866);  Dickens's  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities 
(1859);  Charles  Reade's  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth 
(1861);  George  Eliot's  Romola  (1863);  George  Whyte- 
Melville's  The  Gladiators  (1863);  Blackmore's  Lorna 
Doone  (1869) ;  and  Stevenson's  Kidnapped  (1886) .  Thack- 
eray, who  in  realism  would  have  no  fiction  written  in 
imitation  of  Scott  or  Bulwer,  or  any  of  the  social  slumming 
done  by  Dickens,  in  his  later  novels,  such  as  Esmond  and 
The  Virginians,  flavored  the  classicism  of  the  eighteenth 
century  with  a  melancholy  kind  of  romanticism  which, 
though  quite  similar  to  Scott's,  was  entirely  original ;  and 
thus  it  is  seen  how  it  was  possible  for  Blackmore,  in  Lorna 
Doone  (1869),  to  become  the  neo-romantic  connecting  link 
between  Thackeray's  Esmond  and  Stevenson's  Kidnapped. 
We  should  remember  that  between  Thackeray's  Esmond 
and  Stevenson's  Kidnapped  among  the  hundreds  of 
historical  novels  there  are  only  three  or  four  which  have 
come  to  be  regarded  as  masterpieces:  Kingsley's  West- 
ward Ho!  Dickens's  A  Tale  of  Two  Cities,  Charles  Reade's 
The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  and  Blackmore's  Lorna 
Doone. 

Thackeray  for  a  time  in  Esmond  successfully  crossed 
swords  with  his  instructor  Sir  Walter  Scott;  but  he  was 
slowly  pushed  back  to  the  end  of  the  field  selected  where 
he  gracefully  surrendered  his  bright  historical  blade  to 
one  who  had  proved  to  be  twice  as  skilful  as  himself  in 
thrusts  and  hits.  Henry  Esmond  sorrows  over  the  sweet 
memories  of  his  past  life  and  hugs  his  pathos,  and  calls  for 


Thackeray,  Scott,  and  Stevenson        359 

more  wine  that  has  been  made  bitter-sweet  by  time's 
vicissitudes  to  be  fetched  from  the  cellar  of  Castlewood. 
Now  Scott's  pathos  is  not  forced  from  the  head  but  from 
the  heart;  it  is  not  on  the  order  of  the  intellectualized 
pathos  of  the  shot  that  pulls  the  tigress  Beatrix  down. 
No  tears  are  shed  by  Thackeray  over  her  fall,  for  Nature 
is  neither  ethical  nor  unethical,  neither  just  nor  unjust: 
"The  leopard  follows  his  nature  as  the  lamb  does,  and 
acts  after  the  leopard  law ;  she  can  neither  help  her  beauty 
nor  her  courage,  nor  her  cruelty;  nor  a  single  spot  on  her 
shining  coat;  nor  the  conquering  spirit  which  impels  her; 
nor  the  shot  which  brings  her  down."  Thackeray  is 
heartless  toward  the  fallen  woman.  The  pathos  around 
Beatrix,  the  fallen  Queen  of  the  Esmonds,  sinks  in  the 
scale  when  it  is  compared  with  that  encircling  the  beauti- 
ful hazel-eyed  Mary,  the  fallen  Queen  and  woman  in 
Scott's  The  Abbot,  because  Scott  feels  from  his  heart  for 
the  fate  of  Bothwell's  mistress  as  Thackeray  feels  from 
his  head  for  Beatrix,  when  she  is  caught  playing  with  the 
fire  of  the  Old  Pretender's  kisses.  Then,  too,  the  humor 
that  is  always  lurking  to  show  its  big  manly  front  in 
Scott's  historical  novels  in  Thackeray  has  shrunk  to 
dwarfish  dimensions  as  it  skips  about  Henry  Esmond,  the 
little  Papist,  so  that  he  may  be  hit  in  the  eye  with  a  potato 
on  market-day  in  Hexton,  or  centres  around  the  drunken 
Dick  Steele.  Also  in  a  larger  sense  Thackeray  failed  to 
acquire  the  touch  of  the  large  beneficence  of  Scott's  that 
reveals  no  modified  cynicism,  caused  by  viewing  the  main 
street  of  the  world  as  that  down  which  Esmond  traveled 
jostled  on  this  side  and  on  that  by  those  garbed  in  the 
livery  and  insignia  of  the  pride-of-the-eye  and  the  lust- 
of-the-flesh  army  of  Vanity  Fair.  The  healthful  atmos- 
phere of  Scott's  beneficence  that  Thackeray  was  slow 
to  catch  and  hold  was  quickly  embraced  by  Stevenson 
who  Scott-like  shows  in  his  historical  fiction  that  the  heroic 


360  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

is  simply  virtue  invulnerable  in  its  strength  and  that  the 
unheroic  is  merely  sin  vulnerable  in  its  weakness,  such  as 
always  stayed  with  Scott's  Front-de-Bceuf  in  the  shape 
of  Ulrica  until  the  end,  and  that  from  such  weakness  in 
one's  past  no  one  can  escape;  i.e.,  not  from  one  evil  thing 
that  one  has  ever  done.  Stevenson  went  to  Scott  to 
show  us  sinners  not  in  the  act  of  nursing  the  toothache  on 
Judgment  Day  as  in  Thackeray,  but  suffering  from  soul- 
ache  at  the  loss  of  truth,  honor,  love,  and  faith ;  for  loss  of 
reputation,  health,  and  money,  is  as  nothing  in  comparison 
with  what  the  soul  suffers  when  it  has  by  its  own  acts 
forfeited  the  verities  of  life.  Bulwer,  Thackeray,  Kings- 
ley,  Dickens,  Charles  Reade,  George  Eliot,  Blackmore, 
and  Stevenson,  sound  beneficence  in  a  small  way  on  their 
bugle  of  the  historical,  but  none  of  them  could  blow  on 
Scott's  historical  horn,  the  large  blasts  of  which  destroyed 
Torquilstone  Castle  because  beneficence  was  not  pos- 
sessed by  its  defenders  who  had  long  since  given  up  the 
verities  for  ill-fame  and  money.  Nor  could  even  a 
Thackeray  in  depicting  Marlborough's  Campaign  borrow 
the  horn  long  enough  to  assemble  well-organized  facts  of 
history;  he  could  not  interpret  past  history  in  the  terms 
of  the  present  so  well  as  Scott,  nor  could  he  on  a  large  scale 
humanize  characters  since  he  lacked  the  inspiring  nobility 
of  outlook — the  touchstone  of  Scott's  large  god-like  bene- 
ficence. GifTord,  the  great  judicial  critic,  one  hundred 
years  ago  said,  "The  characters  of  Shakespeare  are  not 
more  exclusively  human,  not  more  perfect  men  and 
women  as  they  live  and  move,  than  are  those  of  this 
mysterious  author" ;  and  the  world  will  on  this  account,  as 
the  years  go  by,  move  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  men  and 
women  in  Scott's  Ivanhoe  and  farther  and  farther  away 
from  the  men  and  women  in  Thackeray's  Esmond. 

When  Charles  Dickens  all  at  once  turned  loose  on  the 
streets  of    London    and  in  its  dens  a  motley  throng  of 


Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  De  Morgan    361 

grotesque  slum-banditti  as  lively  and  romantic  and  as  real 
as  the  Highland  bandits  in  Scott's  novels,  we  come  to  a 
stop ;  for  it  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  trace  all  the 
beautiful  designs  of  interdependence  in  the  flowering 
period  (1 833-1 870)  of  English  fiction  which,  as  Saintsbury 
says,  is  fully  as  great  as  the  Elizabethan  drama  from 
1585  to  1625,  or  the  outbursts  of  English  poetry  from 
1798  to  1825.  But,  if  we  should  be  tempted  to  go  on,  it 
would  be  interesting,  indeed,  for  a  moment  to  summon  the 
banditti  of  William  De  Morgan,  our  present-day  reminder 
of  Dickens  and  Thackeray, — the  creators  of  Bill  Sikes  and 
Barry  Lyndon.  In  When  Ghost  Meets  Ghost  (19 14)  there 
walks  the  spectral  influence  of  a  convict-husband,  Thorn- 
ton Daverill,  to  whom  Old  Maisie  was  true  for  fifty  years. 
As  one  looks  at  the  fragile,  dying  Maisie,  whose  last 
thoughts  are  for  the  welfare  of  her  devil-possessed  son, 
who,  by  her  money,  may  escape  the  pursuers  of  the  law, 
the  reader  sees  behind  the  fluttering,  aged  eyelids  a 
beautiful  soul,  which  had  once  been  in  the  hell  of  Botany 
Bay,  and  which  still  retained  a  full  understanding  of  all 
the  subtle,  strategic  movements  of  this  hell.  For  fifty 
years  Maisie  had  not  permitted  one  ray  of  the  sacred  halo 
of  her  unsullied  soul  to  be  dimmed  by  this  dip  into  the 
cesspool  of  total  depravity  that  had  engulfed  her  husband 
and  son.  The  convict  Abel  Magwitch,  who  craves  affec- 
tion and  secretly  supports  Pip  from  a  Botany  Bay  fortune 
in  Dickens's  Great  Expectations  (1860-61),  when  refash- 
ioned by  De  Morgan  as  Daverill  in  1914,  receives  from  his 
creator  no  heart  other  than  that  which  moves  beneath 
fibres  as  inflexible  as  those  of  steel ;  but  Charles  Dickens's 
Nancy,  who  saved  little  Oliver  from  the  Sikes  she  loved 
and  in  spite  of  every  inducement  held  out  to  her  went 
back  to  be  true  to  the  ruffian  in  accepting  the  terrible  death 
that  she  knew  awaited  her  at  his  hands,  has  grown  into 
an  older,  sweeter  angel  of  loyalty  when  respiritualized 


362  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

as  Maisie  by  William  De  Morgan.  Aunt  M'riar,  Uncle 
Mo's  idol,  who  saved  her  wicked  convict-husband  (the 
son  of  Daverill)  from  being  seized  by  the  officers  of  the  law 
is  another  retrospective  glance  cast  by  De  Morgan  in  the 
direction  of  Dickens's  Nancy. 

And  not  only  in  portraying  slum-banditti  does  Dickens 
prepare  the  road  to  be  traveled  by  De  Morgan,  but  in 
creating  children  whose  sorrows  and  joys  are  greater 
than  those  we  have  seen  delineated  by  Henry  Fielding  in 
Amelia  (1751)  and  Henry  Brooke  in  The  Fool  of  Quality 
(1766) .  Dickens  from  1838  to  1865  in  allotting  fate  to  his 
angelic  children  is  by  far  more  optimistic  than  pessimistic. 
Dickens  arranges  that  better  days  shall  come  to  Oliver 
Twist,  and  that  in  Nicholas  Nickleby  even  Smike's  last 
condition  shall  be  better  than  his  first.  In  Old  Curiosity 
Shop  Little  Nell  must  die;  but  the  little  Marchioness 
escapes  from  the  service  of  Sampson  Brass  by  the  help  and 
love  extended  to  her  by  Dick  Swiveller.  Tiny  Tim  in  A 
Christmas  Carol  makes  it  possible  for  all  who  are  miserable 
around  him  to  become  optimists.  Blind  Bertha  in  The 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth  is  made  happier  by  being  fooled  by 
her  father  Caleb  Plummer  and  is  still  contented  when 
disillusionized.  Little  Paul  Dombey  dies  in  a  big  scene 
rilled  with  the  pathos  of  great  art,  but  lonely  Florence 
lives  to  emerge,  her  life  made  sweeter  by  what  she  had  done 
for  Paul  and  what  at  first  she  could  not  get  from  her 
father.  Little  David  Copperfield  escapes  the  Murdstones, 
escapes  Steerforth,  and  his  doll- wife  Dora,  to  find  Agnes 
and  a  successful  private  and  public  life.  Little  Emily, 
after  touring  the  Continent  with  Steerforth,  goes  to 
Australia  to  rehabilitate  herself.  Thomas  Traddles,  in 
spite  of  the  skeletons  which  he  drew  all  over  his  slate  in 
Creakle's  school  to  remind  himself  that  perhaps  the 
canings  he  received  could  not  last  forever,  was  able  to  pull 
through    misfortunes    to    marry    beautiful    Sophy    and 


Children  in  Dickens's  Novels  363 

successfully  carve  on  the  ledge  of  the  desk  in  one  of  the 
back  rows  of  the  King's  Bench  a  skeleton  in  a  wig.  In 
Bleak  House  little  Jo  finds  that  the  only  path  leading 
away  from  Tom- All- Alone' s  is  that  belonging  to  Death, 
but  Esther  Summerson  the  illegitimate  daughter  of  Lady 
Dedlock  early  finds  an  escape  from  an  unhappy  career  in 
being  passed  by  her  aunt  into  the  keeping  of  kind  Jarn- 
dyce.  In  Hard  Times  Sissy  Jupes,  the  little  waif  from 
Sleary's  circus,  teaches  Louisa  Gradgrind,  who  is  ac- 
quainted with  no  other  education  than  what  is  crammed 
into  her  as  she  attends  the  school  of  hard  facts,  that 
there  is  no  other  way  of  relieving  misery  and  tragedy 
except  by  carrying  into  the  corridor  of  her  father's  school 
the  torch  of  imagination  revealing  something  more  impor- 
tant than  "facts"  in  this  life.  Little  Dorrit,  the  dove  of 
the  Marshalsea,  born  in  it  and  early  without  a  mother's 
care,  toils  for  father,  brother,  and  sister,  and  waits  until  at 
twenty-two  years  of  age  as  a  seamstress  she  meets  Arthur 
Clennam — and  then  escapes  from  the  net  of  her  past  by 
marrying  Arthur  in  the  Marshalsea,  the  prison  chaplain 
performing  the  ceremony.  In  Great  Expectations  little  Pip 
at  last  gets  rid  of  the  convict  that  he  had  supposed  was 
his  father;  and  even  the  convict's  daughter,  Estella,  whose 
heart  Miss  Havisham  had  steeled,  finds  it  melting  under 
the  pressure  of  the  warmth  of  love.  In  Our  Mutual  Friend 
the  hopelessly  crippled  girl- woman  "Jenny  Wren,"  the  little 
dolls'  dressmaker,  who  idolizes  her  drunken  father,  wins 
Lizzie  Hexam's  love  and  after  this  radiates  twice  as  much 
sunshine  and  love  as  before.  And  Lizzie  Hexam  after  her 
disreputable  father,  a  River  Thames  body-snatcher,  is 
drowned  at  his  frightful  trade,  lives  to  marry  Eugene 
Wrayburn  on  his  seeming  death-bed  as  the  heroine  orphan 
Hermy  in  Jeffery  Farnol's  The  Definite  Object  (1917)  lives 
to  marry  Geoffrey  Ravenslee  in  a  similar  manner.  Each 
girl  with  the  burden  of  a  brother  climbs  out  of  Hell's 


364  Motives  in  English  Fiction 

Kitchen,  which  is  always  the  same  whether  in  London 
or  New  York. 

These  little  folk  of  Dickens  able  or  unable  to  extricate 
themselves  from  their  difficulties  are  perhaps  too  angelic, 
too  much  like  Charles  Lamb's  dream  children  who  claimed 
that  they  would  have  to  wait  on  the  shores  of  Lethe 
"millions  of  ages "  before  they  could  "have  existence  and  a 
name" ;  but  this  real  world  of  ours  has  observed  them  now 
for  over  fifty  years  and  would  be  mournfully  reluctant  to 
have  them  disappear,  for  by  the  delineation  of  their  fate  it 
has  learned  to  treat  children  better  so  that  to-day  they 
do  not  move  with  so  much  agony  for  any  length  of  time 
in  our  factories,  tenement  houses,  private  schools,  and 
asylums.  These  little  children  of  Dickens  as  they  stand 
lined  up  before  us  according  to  the  dates  of  their  birth 
still  seem  to  say:  Look  at  us,  for  though  shadows  we  are 
substance,  since  the  angelic  on  the  face  of  the  earth  does 
exist  in  all  children;  therefore,  for  our  sake,  if  you  should 
meet  a  De  Morgan-like  Joseph  Vance  be  a  Dr.  Thorpe  in 
order  to  snatch  him  from  the  gutter  so  that  he  will  live 
to  love  a  Lossie,  one  whose  love  he  never  can  have,  and 
gain  a  spiritual  Janey  whose  love  will  be  something  in  the 
overwhelming  loss  of  Lossie.  If  you  should  meet  in  the 
slums  of  any  great  city  such  a  little  waif  as  De  Morgan's 
Alice  of  "the  airey  way, "  make  it  possible  for  her  to  leave 
such  to  be  educated  and  to  marry  an  artist  Charles  Heath 
so  that  she  can  make  him  find  literature  and  fit  him  to  it 
as  his  real  vocation;  and,  if  you  should  stumble  upon  a 
child  on  the  order  of  De  Morgan's  Lizarann,  do  all  that 
you  can  to  make  her  escape  the  pathos  of  the  death-bed 
that  her  creator  feels  forced  to  give  her.  Life  to-day  can 
be  changed  so  that  it  will  be  impossible  for  any  future 
Dickens  to  kill  a  Little  Nell  or  any  future  De  Morgan 
to  kill  a  Lizarann.  And,  last  of  all,  remember  to  clothe 
yourselves  with  the  charity  of  Dickens  which  is  as  that 


Children  in  De  Morgan's  Novels       365 

of  De  Morgan's  Widow  Thrale,  who,  with  sons  at  sea 
and  a  daughter  married,  "terribly  wanting  some  [one]  to 
kiss,  had  hit  upon  the  expedient  of  taking  charge  of 
invalid  children." 


INDEX 


"Abbot,  The,"  170,  257,  359 
"Absentee,  The,"    157,   211,   214- 

216,320,337 
"Adam  Bede, "  296,  332 
"Adam  Blair,"  299 
"Ada  Reis,"  271,  275-277,  337 
Addison,  Joseph,  86-88,  140,  290 
"Adeline  Mowbray,"  214,  219-220 
"Admiral  on  Shore,  An,"  290 
"Adonais,"  283,  284 
"Adrian  Savage, "  40,  99,  202 
"Adventures    of    a    Guinea,"    88, 

135-136 
"Adventures  of  A  Shilling, "  88,  136 
"Adventures  of  Captain  Singleton, 

The,"  70,  74 
"Adventures    of    David    Simple," 

107-109 
"Adventures  of  Ferdinand,  Count 

Fathom,"  46,  113,  138 
"Adventures     of      Michael     Arm- 
strong, 313-315, 321 
"Adventures  of  Peregrine  Pickle," 

I 1 1-113,348 
"Affair  of  Dishonor,  An,"  57 
Ainsworth,  William  H.,  311,  342, 

356,357 
"Albigenses,  The,"  184,  202,  234 
"Alcida,"  24 
"Alec  Forbes,"  300 
"Alice,"  320-321,  342 
"Alice-For-Short,"  99,  138,  146 
"Almoran  and  Harriet,"  135,  136- 

137 
"Alroy,"  288,  337-338 
"Alton  Locke,"  315,  330 
"Alwyn,"  166 
"Amelia,"  29,    103,   104-107,   109, 

362 
Amory,  Thomas,  III,  116,  124-127, 

181,  189 


"Anastasius,"  262,  285-288 

"Annals  of  the  Parish,"  297,  300 

"  Anna  of  the  Five  Towns, "  296 

"Anna  St.  Ives, "  166,  320 

"Anne  of  Geierstein,"  263 

"Antiquary,  The,"  249,  264 

"Antonina,"  357-358 

"  Arbasto, "  24-26 

"Arcadia,  The,"  23,  35-41,  I22 

"Aretina,"  40,  53 

"Argenis,"  18,  46 

Arnold,  Dr.,  336 

Arnold,  Matthew,  59,  332 

"Arundel,"  180 

Ascham,  Roger,  18,  40,  141 

"A  Shilling,"  136 

"As  You  Like  It,"  34,  35 

"Atherton,  and  Other  Tales,"  290 

"Auld  Licht  Idylls,"  300 

Austen,  Jane,  21,  123,  157,  158,  159, 

161,  186,  208,  231,  237-245,  246, 

261,  277,  282,  290 
"Ayesha,  the  Maid  of  Kars, "  288, 

347 
"Ayrshire  Legatees,     297 


B 


Bacon,  Sir  Francis,  16,  17,  18,  46- 

51,52,65,79,  ii9,  204,337 
Bage,  Robert,   124,  149,   166,   167- 

169 
Ballantyne,  James,  261 
Banim,  John,  208,  303,  306,  310, 

311,  320,  347 
Banim,  Michael,  208,  303-306,  310, 

311,  320,  347 
"Banished  Man,"  175 
"Banker's  Wife,  The,"  302 
"Barchester  Towers,"  331-332 
Barclay,  John,  18,  46 
"Barham  Downs,"  167,  168-169 
"Barnaby  Rudge,"  m,  357 


367 


368 


Index 


Barrett,  Eaton,  123,  141,  153,  164, 

241,  246,  254 
Barrie,  J.  M.,  235,  299,  300,  301 
"Battle  of  the  Books,  The,"  75-76 
"Beauchamp's  Career,"  312,  329 
Beckford,  William,  126,  135,   172- 

174,  203,  276, 277 
Bede,  Cuthbert  (Rev.  Edward  Brad- 
ley), no,  199 
Behn,  Mrs.  Aphra,   62-67,  69,  90, 

202, 211 
"Belford  Regis,"  290 
"Belinda,"  208-211 
Bellamy,  Edward,  18 
"Ben  Hur,"  345,  346 
Bennett,  Enoch  A.,  202,  208,  295- 

296 
Benson,  Robert  Hugh,  335-336 
"Bentivolio  and  Urania,"    18,  40, 

53-58,110 
"Beside  the  Bonnie  Briar  Bush," 

300 
"Betrothed,  The,"  262 
Bible,  The,  16,  58,  89 
" ' Bickerstaff '  Papers,  The,"  78 
Birrell,  Augustine,  83 
"Bivouac,  "356 

"Black  Bookes  Messenger,"  24 
"Black  Dennis,"  347 
"Black  Douglas,  The,"  138,  234 
"Black  Dwarf,  The,"  249-250 
Blackmore,  Richard,  no,  358,  360 
"  Black  Prophet,  The, "  308 
Black,  William,  231,  300 
"Blackwood's  Magazine,"  234,  300 
"Bleak  House,"  73,  98,  269,  270, 

363 

"Book  of  Martyrs,"  58 
"Border  Minstrelsy,"  221 
Borrow,  George,  124 
Boucicault,  Dion,  306 
Boyle,  Roger,  40,  53 
"Brambletye  House,"  262,  311 
"Bravo  of  Venice,  The,"  202,  205 
Bray,  Anna  E.,  302-303 
"Bride    of     Lammermoor,     The," 

228,  253-254,  345 
Brieux,  Eugene,  80 
Bronte,    Charlotte,    89,    no,    125, 

159,  185,  231,323,356 
Bronte,   Emily,   89,  98,    138,    163, 

188,  192,  208,  232,  233,  286,  294- 

295,35T.356 
Brooke,  Henry,  72,  no,  114,  128, 

132,  141-146,  320,  362 
Brooke,  Mrs.  Frances,  137-138,  290 
Brougham,  272 


Brown,  C.  B.,  138,  201,  202 
Brown,  George  Douglas,  235,  301 
Brunton,  Mary,  95,  169,  206,  237 
"Building  of  the  Ship,  The,"  345 
Bulwer,  Edward,  Lord  Lytton,  n, 
13,   18,    50,    114,   128,   136,  138, 
166,  197,  231,  271,  277,  302,  311, 
320,  338-346,  356,  358,  360 
Bunyan,  John,  43,  52,  53,  54,  56, 

57,  58-62,  69,  72,  77 
Burke,  Edmund,  177,  308 
Burney,    Frances    (Madame    d'Ar- 
blay),    107,    155-166,    180,    192, 
193,  237,  238,  243,  261,  282 
Butler,  Samuel,  18,  81-83 
Byron,  Lady,  284 

Byron,  Lord,  172,  267,  268,  271, 
273,  274,  277,  283,  284,  285,  298, 
339 


Cable,  G.  W.,  65 

Caine,  Hall,  66,  220,  231,  332,  334, 

335 
"Caleb     Williams"     ("Things    As 

They  Are"),  167,  177,  178,  195- 

197,  320 
Calprenede,  52 
"Camilla,"  160-162 
Campbell,  Thomas,  284 
"Camp  of  Refuge,  The,"  357 
Canby,  H.  S.,  69 
Canning,  267,  272 
"Can  You  Forgive  Her?"  325,  326 
"Captive,  The,"  206 
Carleton,    William,    208,    307-310, 

311,346,347 
"Casa  Braccio,"  66 
"Case  of  Richard  Meynell,  The," 

330. 336 
"Castle  Dangerous,"  264 
"Castle of  Otranto,  The,"  138,  141, 

I53,i8i 
"Castle  Rackrent,"  206,  207,  217, 

320 
"Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne, " 

40,  113,  176,  179,  181,  189 
"Castle  Spectre, "  206,  273 
"Casuals  of  the  Sea,  The, "  353 
"  Catherine, "  60 

"Caxtons,  The,"  n-13,  128,  342 
Caxton,  William,  1 
"Cecil,  "301 

"Cecilia,"  158-160,  162,  188 
"Celestina,"  175 
Cervantes,  69 


Index 


369 


Chamier,  Frederick,  351 
"Changed  Man,  and  Other  Tales, " 

334 
"Characters  of  Vices  and  Virtues,  " 

86 

"Characters"  (Overbury's),  86 
"Charles  O'Malley, "  356 
"Charles  Vernon,"  323 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  8 
"Cheap  Repository,"  235 
Chesterfield,  Lord,  216 
Chettle,  Henry,  29,  40 
"Children  of  the  Abbey,  The,"  95, 

206-207 
"Christian  Examiner,  The,"  308 
"Christian,  The,"  66 
"Christie  Johnstone, "  300 
"Christmas  Carol,  A,"  362 
"Christ's  Hospital  Five-and-Thirty 

Years  Ago,"  122 
"Chrysal,"88,  135-136 
Churchill,  Winston,  17 
Cibber,  Colley,  163 
Clairmont,  Jane,  282 
"Clarissa    Harlowe, "    90-95,    145, 

339 
"Clelie,"52 
"Cloister  and   the   Hearth,   The," 

46,  113,  221,  332-333.  358 
"  Cloudesley, "  202 
"Coelebs   in    Search    of    a    Wife," 

236-237 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  267,  268,  272,  321 
"Collegians,    The,"    208,   306-307, 

346 

Collins,  Wilkie,  357 
Colman  the  Younger,  206 
"Coming  Race,  The, "18,  50 
"Concerning  Humour  in  Comedy," 

213 

"Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- 

Eater,"2ii 
Congreve,  William,  67-69,  74,  101, 

157.213 
"Coningsby,"    268,    271,   312-313, 

318-319,  320,  321,  330,  338 
Conrad,  Joseph,  352-353 
"Contarini  Fleming,"  288 
Cooper,  James  F.,  57,  65,  no,  149, 

35i 

"Corsair,  The,"  339 
"Coryston  Family,  The,"  330 
"Cottagers  of   Glenburnie,    The," 

234-235.  298 
Countess  of  Blessington,  285 
"Count  Robert  of  Paris, "  264 
Coventry,  Frank,  no,  136 


Craik,  Dinah  Mulock,  324 

"Cranford,"  291,  296 

Crawford,  Marion,  66 

"Crichton,"3ii 

"Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  The,  "  362 

Crockett,  S.  R.,  138,  202,  234,  235, 

301 
"Crohoore  of  the  Billhook,"  306 
Croker,  John  Wilson,  320 
Croly,  George,  204,  337 
"Croppy,  The,"  303-306 
"Crotchet  Castle,"  272 
Crowne,  John,  40,  52,  53 
"Cruise  of  the  Midge,  The,"  m, 

350-351 
Cumberland,  Richard,  180 
"Curse of  Kehama,  The, "  119 
"Custom  of  the  Country,  The,"  15 
"Cyril  Thornton,"  227,  357 


D 


"  Damaged  Goods,  "  80 

"Daniel  Deronda,"   163,  175,  284, 

332 
"David    Copperfield,        no,     114, 

126,  323,  343 
"David  Elginbrod,"  138,  300 
"David  Grieve, "  335 
Day,  Thomas,  64,  126,  141,  172 
"Deerbrook,"  291,  292-293,  296 
"De  Finibus,"  132 
"Definite  Object,  The,"  363 
Defoe,  Daniel,  18,  41,  42,  57,  60, 

62,  63,  64,  66,  69-75,  80,  88,  no, 

119,  149,  168,  278,  279,  280,  315, 

324  ,      . 

"Delectable  Historie  of  Forbonius 

and  Priscera, "  33 
"Delia  Blanchflower, "  330 
Deloney,  Thomas,  43~46>  IJ3.  138, 

188,  232,  354 
"Deloraine,"  202 
De   Morgan,  William,  57,   62,   99, 

102,  138,  146,  361-362,  364-365 
"Demos,"  143 

De  Quincey,  Thomas,  131,  211 
"Desmond,"    113,    166,    169,    175- 

177.  179.  320 

"Destiny,  "281-282 

"Devereux,"  341-342,  356 

"Diall  of  Princes,"  18 

"Diana  Enamorada,"  35 

Dickens,  Charles,  62,  72,  73,  98, 
102,  106,  109,  in,  112,  114,  115, 
118,  136,  142,  143,  166,  176,  185, 
196,  199,  202,  269,  270,  271,  278, 


3?o 


Index 


Dickens,  Charles — Continued 

279,  280,  291,  301,  313,  315,  323, 
324,  341,  343,  344,  345,  346,  347, 
357,  358,  360,  361,  362-364 

"  Dinner  at  Poplar  Walk,  A,  "  346 

"Discipline, "  237 

"Discovery  of  a  World  in  the 
Moone, "  18 

"Disowned,"  320,  341,  356 

"  Disputation  Between  a  He  Conny- 
Catcher  and  a  She  Conny- 
Catcher, "  24 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  62,  115,  191, 
200,  204,  268,  269,  271,  288,  301, 
3H-330,337-338,  341,344 

Dodsley,  153 

"Donal  Grant,"  300 

"Don  Sebastian,"  226,  227-228 

"Dora,  "290 

"Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,"  80 

Dryden,  John,  134 

"Duke  of  Monmouth,"  306 

"Duke's  Children,"  325 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  227 

Du  Maurier,  231 

E 

Earle,  John,  86 

Edgeworth,  Maria,  64,  97,  126,  157, 
164,  172,  206,  207-217,  222,  237, 
243,  248,  261,  264,  282,  291,  320, 

337,347 

"Edward,"  175 

Egan,  Pierce,  301 

"Eleanor,"  99,335 

Eliot,  George,  89,  159,  175,  185, 
200,  204,  208,  239,  271,  279,  280, 
283,  284,  292,  294,  295,  296,  327- 
329,  332,  338,  358,  360 

"Ellen  Middleton,"  330 

"El  Relox  de  Principes,"  18 

"Emigrants  of  Ahadarra,  The," 
308,309-310 

"Emile, "  141 

"Emilie  de  Coulanges,"  211,  212- 
213 

"Emily  Montague,"  137 

"Emma,"  240,  243 

"Emmeline, "  175,  180,  189 

"Emmeline"  (Brunton's),  237 

"Emmera,  or  the  Fair  American," 
64,  147-148,  150,  188 

"  Endymion, "  330 

"English  Bards  and  Scotch  Re- 
viewers, "  267 

''English  Rogue,  The, "  43,  52 


"Ennui, "  211,  213 
"Entail,  The,"  297,  298 
"  Epipsychidion, "  284 
"Erewhon,"  18,  81 
"Erewhon  Revisited,"  81-82 
"Ernest    Maltravers,"    320,    342- 

343 
"Esmond,"  80,  342,  358-360 
"Ethel  Churchill,"  98,230,  342,  355 
"Ethelinde, "  175 
"  Eugene  Aram, "  311,  342 
"Euphemia, "  40,  64,  123-124,  189 
"Euphues, "  14,  18-23,  141 
"Euphues  and  his  England,"  23 
"Eustace  Diamonds,  The,"  114 
"Evelina,"  155-158,  159,  162,  192 
"Excursion,"  137 
"Exiles,  The,"  153 
Ezekiel,  16,  51 


'Fair  God,  The,"  345 

'  Fair  Jilt,  The, "  65-66,  67,  90 

'  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,  The, "  263 

'Fair  Syrian,  The,"  167 

'Falkland,"  302,  338-339 

'Falkner, "  284 

'Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  The," 

204 
'Far  Country,  A,"  17 
'Fardorougha  the  Miser,  "  208,  308 
Farnol,  Jeffery,  363 
'Fatal  Revenge,  The,"  228 
'Father  and  Daughter,"  195,  218- 

219 
'Father  Butler,"  308,  346 
'Father  Connell,"  306 
'Felix  Holt,"  327-329 
'Female  Quixote,  The,"  107,  122- 

123 
"Fenwick's  Career,"  335 
Ferrier,   Susan   E.,    114,    172,   231, 

261,  277-282 
Fielding,  Henry,  23,  28,  29,  40,  43, 
58,  62,  67,  72,  76,  79,  80,  81,  99- 
107,  108,  109,  in,  115,  119,  122, 
132,  139,  140,  146,  155,  156,  166, 
180,  181,  216,  237,  245,  248,  271, 
339-362 
Fielding,  Sarah,  107-109 
"Finish  to  the  Adventures  of  Tom, 

Jerry,  and  Logic,"  301 
"First  Men  in  the  Moon,"  18,  83- 

85 
Fitzgerald,  Lord  Edward,  224 
"Fleetwood,"  72,  no,  198-200 


Index 


371 


Fletcher,  John,  69 
"Florence  Macarthy,  "  222,  320 
"  Food  of  the  Gods,  The, "  83 
"Foolpf  Quality,  The,"  no,  141- 

146,320,362 
Ford,  Emanuel,  40,  52 
"  Foresters,  The, "  300 
"Forsaken  Merman,  The,"  332 
"Fortunesof  Nigel,  The, "  258,  259- 

260,357 
Fouque,  257 
Foxe,  58 

"Franceses  Carrara,"  355 
"Frankenstein,"  138,233,  267,282, 

283 
"Franklin,  A,"  87 
"Frank  Mildmay,"  346 
"Fraser's  Magazine, "  106 
Freeman,  Mrs.  Mary  Wilkins,  296 
"  Fruit  of  the  Tree,  The, "  15 
Fullerton,  Lady  G.,  330 


"Gadfly,  The,"  333 

Galignani,  226 

Gait,  John,  234,  297-298,  300 

"Gareth  and  Lynette, "  37 

Garrick,  235 

Gaskell,  Mrs.,  218,  291,  292,  293- 

294,296,322-323,324 
"Gay  Lord  Quex,  The,"  163 
"  Gentlecraf  t, "  43 
"Ghosts,  "80 
Gifford,  265,  267,  360 
"Gilbert  Gurney, "  269 
Gissing,  George,  143 
"Gladiators,  The,  "358 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  327 
Glascock,  W.N. ,351 
Gleig.G.  R.,227,  311 
"  Glenarvon, "  273-274 
Godwin,  Bishop  Francis,  18 
Godwin,  William,  62,  72,  no,  166, 

177.  185,  195-203,  232,  282,  315, 

320,324 
Goethe,  233,  260 
Goldsmith,   Oliver,    72,    in,    128, 

132, 139-140,  290,  297 
"Good-Natuied  Man,  The,"  139 
Gore,  Mrs.  Catherine,  301-302 
"Grace  Abounding, "  58 
"Graham  Hamilton,"  274-275 
"Grandissimes,  The,"  65 
"  Grateful  Negro,  The, "  64, 172,211 
Graves,  Richard,  116,  124,  150-153, 

181,332 


"Great  Expectations,"  98,  361,  363 
Greene,  Robert,  II,  23-33,  34,  35, 

39.  43,  52 
Griffin,  Gerald,  208,  306-307,  310, 

346,347 
"Groatsworth  of  Wit,     24,  29-30 
"Gryll  Grange,"  273 
Guevara,  18 
"Gulliver's   Travels,"    17,    18,   46, 

78-85,119 
"Guy  Fawkes,"  311 
"Guy   Mannering, "   208,   248-249, 

264 
"Gwydonius, "  24 


H 


"Hajji  Baba,  "  262,  287-288 
"Hajji  Baba  in  England,"  346,  347 
Hall,  Bishop  Joseph,  86 
Hall,    Mrs.    S.    C.     (Anna    Maria 

Fielding),  290,  346 
Hamilton,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  234-235, 

298 
Hamilton,  Thomas,  227,  357 
"Hamlet,  "253 
"Hand  and  Word,  The,"  306 
"Handy  Andy, "  208 
Hannay,  James,  351 
"Harbor,  The,"  17 
"Hard  Cash,"  188,  232,  324 
"  Hard  Times, "  324,  363 
Hardy,  Thomas,  61,  192,  220,  334, 

335 
"Harold,"  342,  356 
"  Harriet  Stuart, "  123 
Harrington,  James,  18,  46 
Harrison,  Mrs.,  40,  99,  202 
"Harry  Lorrequer, "  208 
"Haunted  and  the  Haunters,  The," 

342 
Hawkesworth,  John,  135,  136-137 
Hawkins,  Anthony  Hope,  345 
Hawthorne,    Nathaniel,    136,    174, 

201,218,237,252 
Haywood,  Mrs.  Eliza,   18,  88,  89, 

155 
"Headlong  Hall,"  267,  273 
Head,  Richard,  43,  52 
"Heart  of  Midlothian,  The,"  183, 

231,    251-252 
"Heir  of  Redclyffe,"33i 
"Helbeckof  Bannisdale, "  335 
"Helen,"  217 
Henley,  Samuel,  172 
Henley,  William  Ernest,  298 
"Henrietta,"  123 


372 


Index 


"Henry,"  180 

"Hereward  the  Wake,"  357,  358 

"Hermsprong;  or,  Man  As   He  Is 

Not,"  167 
"Heroine,  The,"  123,  141,  241,  246, 

254 
'Hints  for  an  Essay  on  Conversa- 
tion," 77 

"History  of  Miss  Betsy  Thought- 
less, The, "  155 

Hoadley,  90 

Holcroft,   Thomas,    124,    149,    166, 
320 

Holland,  Lady,  274 

"Holy  War,  The,"  56,  57,  58 

Hookham,  181 

Hook,  Theodore,  268-270,  301 ,  346 

Hope,  Thomas,  42,  175,  262,  277, 
285-288 

"Hour and  the  Man,  The, "  65,  172, 

221,313,357 
"House  with  the  Green   Shutters, 

The,"  235,301 
Howard,  John,  196 
Hughes,  Thomas,  no,  199 
"  Hugh  Trevor, "  166 
Hugo,  Victor,  145,  315 
"Humphry  Clinker, "  87,  112,  114- 

118,  156,241,297 
"Hungarian  Brothers,  The,"  226- 

227 
Hunt,  Leigh,  119,  270-271 
"Hypatia,"  33<>-33i,  35« 


T 


"Ibrahim,"  52 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  80 

"Idalia,  "89 

"  Ida  of  Athens, "  222 

"  Idylls  of  the  King,  "10 

Imlay,  Fanny,  282 

Inchbald,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  89,  155, 

192-195.218,348 
"Incognita,"  67-69,  74 
Ingelo,  Nathaniel,  18,  40,  53-58,  1 10 
"  Inheritance, "  280-281 
"  Initiation, "  335-336 
"  Invasion,  The,  "  306,  346 
Irving,  Washington,  76,   114,   185, 

290 
"Island  of  Doctor  Mdreau,"  83 
"Isle  of  Pines,"  18 
"Italian,  The,"  44,  66,    159,   182, 

186-188,  204,  354 
"It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend," 

324 


"It   Never  Can   Happen  Again," 

102 
"Ivanhoe,"     234,     254,     255-256, 

262,  263,  265,  337,  345,  360 


J 


"Jack  Hatch,"  290 

"  Jack  of  Newbury, "  43 

"Jack  Sheppard,  "311 

"Jack  the  Shrimp, "  347 

James  I  of  England,  126 

James,  G.  P.  R.,  346,  356 

James,  Henry,  23 

"James  Wallace,"  167 

"Jane  Eyre,"  159,  185,  188,  200 

Jeffrey,  Lord,  300 

"Jemmy  and  Jenny  Jessamy, "  89 

Jerrold,  Douglas,  126 

"John  Buncle,"  124-127,  181,  189 

"John  Halifax,  Gentleman,"  324 

"John  Inglesant,  Gentleman,"  333- 

334 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  79,  88,  133- 

135-235 
Johnstone,  Charles,  88,  115-136 
"Jonathan  Jefferson  WhiJaw,  "313 
"Jonathan  Wild,"  102,  107 
Jones,  Henry  A.,  195,  310 
Jonson,  Ben,  99,  101 
"Jorrocks's   Jaunts  and  Jollities," 

347 

"Joseph    Andrews,"     76,     99-102, 

107, 109 
"Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  Lisbon," 

106 
"Journal  to  Stella,"  80 
"Journey  from  This  World  to  the 

Next,  A,"  79,  181 
"  Jude  the  Obscure,  "  61 
"Julia  de  Roubigne, "  148-149 
"Julia  Mandeville,"  137-138 
"Juliet  Grenville, "  146 
Juvenal,  342 


Keats,  267,  356 

Keble,  33 1 

"  Kenilworth, "  169,  170,  171,  258- 

259 
"Kidnapped,"  264,  301,  358 
Kingsley,    Charles,   259,  315,  321, 

330-331,  351-352,  357,  358,  360 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  351 
"Kipps,"  83,  212 
Kirkman,  Francis,  43,  52 


Index 


373 


"Knickerbocker's    History    of  New- 
York,  "76 
"Knight  of  St.  John,"  226 
Kotzebue,  206 


L 


La  Bruyere,  86,  87 
"Lady's  Magazine,  The,"  288 
Lamb,  Charles,  1 19,  126,  127,  364 
Lamb,    Lady   Caroline,    192,    204, 

271,272,273-277,337 
"Lancelot  and  Elaine,"  10 
"  Land  of  the  Spirit,  The, "  194 
Landon,  Letitia  E.  (Mrs.  Maclean), 
44, 66, 98, 163, 188, 190, 191 ,  204, 
230, 34i.  342,  346,  353-356 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  126 
"Last  Chronicle  of  Barset,  The," 

325  .    m      „ 

"Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  The,     342, 

345, 346,  356 
"Last  Man,  The,"  271,  283-284 
"Last    Man,    The  "    (Campbell's), 

284 
"  Last  of  the  Barons,  The, "  342,  356 
"  Last  of  the  Line,  The, "  347 
"  La  Vendue,  358 
"Lavengro, "  124 
Lawrence,  George  A.,  286 
"  Lawrie  Todd, "  297 
Lazarus,  Emma,  345 
Lee,  Sophia,  97,  164,  169-172,  221 
"  Legend  of  Montrose,  The, "  254- 

255 
Leland,  Thomas,  171 
Lennox,    Mrs.    Charlotte,    40,    64, 

107,  122-124,   153,  189,  241 
Le  Sage,  339 
"Les  Caracteres, "  86 
"Les  Contes  Moraux,"  216 
"Les  Miserables, "  146 
"Letters,  "216 

Lever,  Charles  J.,  208,311,347,356 
Lewis,  Matthew,  66,  138,  175,  203- 

206,  207,  273,  277,  337,  34° 
"Life  and  Death  of  Mr.  Badman," 

43,58-61 
"Life  and  Death  of  William  Long- 
beard,  "33 
"Life  of  Colonel  Jack,  The,"  73~75 
"  Life  in  London, "  301 
"  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Irish  Life, " 

290 
"Lights   and   Shadows  of  Scottish 

Life,"  300 
Litchfield,  Mrs.,  206 


"Little  Dorrit,"  324 

"Little  Minister,  The,"  299 

Lockhart,  J.  G.,  1 10,  199,  298-299 

Lodge,  Thomas,  23, 31-35.  39 

"Lodore,"  271,  284-285 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  345 

"Longsword,"i7l 

"  Looking  Backward, "  18 

"Lord  Jim,  "352-353 

"Lorna  Doone, "  no,  35S 

"Lothair, "  330 

"Lough  Derg  Pilgrim,"  308,  346 

Lover,  Samuel,  208,  311,  347 

"Lucky  Mistake,  The,"  65,  66,  69, 

202 
"Lydia,  "64 
Lyly,  John,  13,  18-23,  24,  33,  141. 

257 


M 


"Mabel  O'Neil's  Curse,"  347~348 
Macaulay,  T.  B.,  215 
"Macbeth,"  106 
Macdonald,    George,    9,    138,    235, 

300,333 
Macfarlane,  Charles,  357 
Mackensie,  George,  40,  53 
Mackenzie,  Henry,  64, 97,  123,  131, 

146,  148-150,  281,  339,  340,  344 
"  Madame  deFleury,"  211,  213-214 
Maginn,  William,  106 
"Maid  Marian,"  265-266 
"Malcolm,  "300 
"Malmistic,"346 
Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  1-13,  26,  39, 

40,330 
"Mamillia,"24 
"Man  As  He  Is,"  167 
"  Mandeville, "  no,  200-202 
" Man  in  the  Moone,  The,"  18 
Manley,  Mrs.  Mary,  18,  88,  89 
Manners,  Lord  John,  271 
"Man  of  Feeling,"  97,  148,  149 
"  Man  of  the  World,  The, "  64,  149- 

150,339 
"Mansfield  Park,"  239,  240 
"Mansie  Wauch, "  300 
"Manufacturers,  The,"  211 
"  Marcella, "  329 
"Marchioness  of  Brinvilliers,  The," 

357 
"Marchmont, '  175 
"  Margaret  Maitland, "  300 
"Margarite  of  America,"  33 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  30 
Marmontel,  216 


374 


Index 


"Marquis  of  Lossie,"  300 
"Marriage"    (Ferrier's),    114,    231, 

278-280 
"Marriage  of  William  Ashe,  The," 

192,272 
"Marriage"  (Wells's),  17 
Marryat,    Frederick,    57,    64,    in, 

346,351 
"Martin  Chuzzlewit, "  280 
Martineau,  Harriet,  65,  172,  221, 

291,  292-293,  294,  296,  313,  357 
Massey,  Gerald,  271,  328,  329 
"Master  of  Ballantrae,  The,"  93, 

264,301 
"Mating  of  Lydia,  The, "  322,  330 
Maturin,  C.  R.,  138,  184,  198,  204, 

228-234,  253,  282,  332,  338 
Maturin  the  Younger,  345 
Maxse,  Admiral,  272 
"Maxwell,  "346 
Maxwell,  W.  H.,  356 
McFee,  William,  353 
Melbourne,  Lord,  272,  273,  277 
Meldrum,  D.  S.,  300 
"Melincourt,"  267,  268 
"Melmoth,"    138,    204,    230,    231- 

234, 282,  338 
Melville,  Lewis,  173 
"Memoirs    of     a    Certain     Island 

Adjacent  to  Utopia, "  18 
"Memoirs  of  an  Umbrella,"  136 
"  Menaphon,  "  24,  35 
Meredith,  George,  220,    244,   245, 

272,299,312,329 
"Microcosmographie,"  86 
"Middlemarch,"  279-280,  292,  295, 

296 
"Midshipman  Easy,"  57,  64 
Milbanke,  Miss,  274 
"Milesian  Chief,  The, "  228-230 
"Mill  on  the  Floss,  The, "  294,  296 
Milton,  John,  93,  137 
"Misfortunes  of  Elphin,  The,"  272 
"Missionary,  The,"  222 
Mitford,  Mary  Russell,   138,  288- 

296, 347 
"Modern  Antiques,"  289-290 
"Modern  Utopia,  A,"  17,  18 
Moir,  D.  M.,  300 
"Moll  Flanders,"  71-72 
"Monastery,  The,"   22,    138,    154, 

241,  248,  254,  256-258,  277 
"Monk,  The,"  66,   138,  202,  203- 

206,  277,  337 
"Montalbert,"  175 
Montemayor,  George  de,  35 
"Monthly  Magazine,"  346 


Monypenny,  W.  F.,  321 

Moore,     Dr.     John,     66,     174-175, 

247, 339 
"Moorland    Cottage,"     291,     293- 

294, 296 
"  Mordaunt,"  175 
More,  Mrs.  Hannah,  235-237 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  14-18,  46,  50, 

51,  73,  74 
Morier,  James,  42,  262,  277,  287- 

288,  346,  347 
Morris,  William,  18 
"Morte  Darthur, "  1-13,  40,  330 
"Mortimer,  "340 
"Mount  Henneth,"  167 
"Mourning  Garment,"  24 
"Mr.  Verdant  Green,"  no,  199 
Munday,  23 

"Murad  the  Unlucky,  "  211 
"My  Novel,"  342 
"My  School-fellows, "  290 
"Mysteries  of  Udolpho,  The,"  97, 

x38»  ^ll*  l82,  185-186,  202,  241 
"  Mysterious  Island,  The,  "  353 


N 


Nash,  Thomas,   41-43,   52,   58,  66, 

74  .        , 

Natural  History  and  Antiquities  of 

Selborne,  290 
"Nature  and  Art,"    193-195,  218, 

348 
"Never  Too  Late,"  24,  27-29,  30, 

35 

Neville,  Henry,  18 

"New  Atalantis,  The,"  18 

"New    Atlantis,"     18,    46-51,    52, 

119,337 

"  New  Grub  Street, "  143 

Newman,  331 

"News  from  Nowhere,"  18 

"New   Sporting    Magazine,"    346- 

347 
"Newton  Forster, "  346 
"Nicholas  Nickleby,  "  313,  362 
"Nigger   of   the    Narcissus,    The," 

352 
"Nightmare  Abbey, "  100,  130,231, 

266, 268 
North,  18 

"  North  and  South,  "  323 
"Northanger    Abbey,"     123,     186, 

231,  238,  240-241 
"Novice  of  St.  Dominick,"  222 
"Nowlans,  The,"  306 


Index 


375 


"O'Briens    and    the    O'Flahertys, 
The,"    222,    224-226,    306,    320, 

347 
"Oceana,"  18,  46 
0'Connell,305 
"  Ode  to  a  Skylark, "  284 
"0'Donnell,"222 
"Odyssey,  The,"  215 
"O'Hara    Tales,    The,"    208,    303, 

311 

" Old  Curiosity  Shop,"  343,  362 
"Old  English  Baron,  The"  (Cham- 
pion of  Virtue),  1 53-154.  221 
"Old  London  Bridge,"  357 
"Old  Manor  House,"  64, 175,  178- 

179,211 
"Old    Mortality,"    234,    250-251, 

263,  298,  299,  357 
"Old  Wives'  Tale,  The,"  296 
Oliphant,  Mrs.  Margaret,  300,  333, 

336-337    . 
"Oliver  Twist,     313 
"On  a  Peal  of  Bells,"  131 
Opie,  Mrs.  Amelia,  163,  195,  214, 

218-220,237 
"  Ormond, "  2 16-2 1 7 
"Ornatus  and  Artesia,"  52 
"Oroonoko, "  63-65,  211 
"Our  Mutual  Friend,  "  363 
"  Our  Village, "  138,  288-296,  347 
"Outcast,  The,"  194 
Overbury,  Sir  Thomas,  86,  87 
Owenson,  Sydney  (Lady  Morgan), 

164,  188,  208,  217,  222-226,  248, 

306,  320,  347 


Page,  Thomas  Nelson,  194 
Paltock,  Robert,  18,  1 19-122 
"Pamela,"  89-90,  100 
"Pandion  and  Amphigeneia,"   40, 

52,53 
"Pandosto,"24,  25,31-33,34,35 
Pardoe,  Julia,  288 
Parker,  Gilbert,  93,  264 
"Parismus,"40 
"  Parra  Sasthia, "  308 
"  Parthenissa, "  40,  53 
"Pastor's  Fireside,  The,"  221 
"Patronage,"  217,  320 
"Paul  Clifford,"  311,  3 2°,  342 
Peacock,  Thomas   Love,   81,    100, 

115.  130,  231,  265-273,  277,  312 
"Peep  o'  Day,  The,"  306 
"Pelham,"  271,  339~34i,  346 


"Pendennis,"  106,  107,  270 
"Perkin  Warbcck,"  283 
"Perimedes,  the  Blacksmith,"  24 
"Persuasion,"   231,  238,   240,  242- 

243,245 
"Peter  Wilkins,"  18,  1 19-122 
"Petite     Pallace     of      Pettie     his 

Pleasure,"  18 
Pettie,  George,  18 
"  Peveril  of  the  Peak, "  258,  260,  263 
"  Phantastes, "  9 
"  Philander  and  Chloe,"  88 
"Phil  Fogarty,"  311 
Phillpotts,  Eden,  334~335 
"Philomela,  "24 
"Phineas  Finn,"  325 
"Phineas  Redux,"  325 
Phiz  (Browne),  136 
"Pickwick  Papers,"  301,  347 
"Piers  Plainnes  Seaven  Yeres  Pren- 

tiship, "  40 
"Pilgrim's   Progress,"   52,   53,   54, 

56,  58,  61-62,  63,  70 
"Pilot,  The,"  no 
Pinero,  A.  W.,  163 
"Pirate,  The,"  no,  259 
"  Pit  and  the  Pendulum,  The, "  204, 

232 
Pitt,  305 
Plato, 16,  51 

Poe,  Edgar  A.,  186,  204,  232 
"Political  Justice,"  196,  197 
"Political  Quixote,  The,"  123 
Pollard,  A.  W.,  10 
"  Pompey  the  Little, "  no,  136 
Poole,  Ernest,  17 
Porter,   Anna,   220,    226-228,    232, 

288 
Porter,  Jane,  220-222,  228 
"Practical  Piety,"  236 
"Pride   and   Prejudice,"    21,    238, 

239-240, 244-245 
"Prime   Minister,    The,      325-327, 

332 
"  Prisoner  of  Zenda,  The,     345 
"Protestant,  The,"  302 
"Provencal  Tale,  The,"  185-186 
"Provoked  Husband,  The,"  163 
"Provost,  The,"  297 
Pusey,  330,  331        .       , 
"Put  Yourself  in  his  Place,     324 

Q 

"Quarterly  Review,"  243,  264,  265, 

267 
"Quentin  Durward,"  260-261 


376 


Ind 


ex 


R 


Radcliffe,  Mrs.  Ann,  40,  44,  66,  97, 
113,  116,  138,  153,  157,  159,  161, 
164,  175,  176,  178,  179,  181-191, 
197,  202,  203,  204,  207,  225,  234, 
238,  241,  247,  248,  264,  340,  353, 
354,  355,  356 

"Rapparee,  The,"  347 

"Rasselas,"  79,  88,  I33~i35.  *7- 

Reade,  Charles,  46,  113,  188,  221, 
231,  232,  300,  302,  324,  332-333, 
358,360 

"Reading  Abbey,"  357 

"Recess,  The,"  97,  169-172,  221 

Redgauntlct,  249,  262 

Reeve,  Clara,  153-154,  221 

"Reginald  Dal  ton,"  no,  199 

"Republic,  The,"  16 

"Research  Magnificent,  The, "  83 

Richardson,  Samuel,  11,  62,  66, 
86,  88,  89-99,  103,  107,  112,  119, 
130,  139.  I45»  155,  169,  180,  193, 
206,  216,  237,  239,  267,  281,  289, 
330,  339,  340,  344 

"Richelieu"  (G.  P.  R.  James's), 
346,356 

"Rienzi,"356 

"Ringan  Gilhaize, "  297,  298 

"Road  to  Ruin,  The, "  166 

"Robert  Elsmere, "  329,  335,  336 

"Robert  Falconer,"  300 

Robinson,  Crabbe,  126 

"Robinson  Crusoe,"  18,  69-70,  119 

Robinson,  Emma,  357 

"RobRo}',  "208,231,252-253,258 

Robynson,  Ralph,  14 

Roche,  Regina  M.,  95,  206-207 

"Roderick  Random,"  109-111,  115, 
"8,348,351 

Rodwell,  G.  H.,  136,  357 

"Romance  and  Reality,"  44,  66, 
98,  163,  188,  190,  204,  346, 353- 
356 

"Romance  of  the  Forest,  The," 
182, 183-185,  188,  189 

"Romance  cf  the  Harem,"  288 

"Romany  Rye,"  124 

"Romeo  and  Juliet, "  253 

Romilly,  320 

Romney,  272 

"Romola,"332,  358 

"Rookwood,  "311 

"Rory  O'More, "  208 

"  Rosalynde, "  32-35 

Rostand,  Edmond,  134 

Rothschild,  Baron  A.  de,  271 


Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,   141,    166, 

172,  196 
Ruskin,  John,  249 
Russell,  Lord  John,  267 


S 


"St.  Clair,"  222 

"St.  Leon,"  197-198,  282 

St.  Pierre,  210 

"St.  Ronan's  Well,"  261 

Saintsbury,  180,  361 

"Salathiel,"337 

"Salem  Chapel,"  336-337 

"Sandford  and  Merton,"  64,   141, 

172 
Sannazaro,  Jacopo,  35 
"Sayings  and  Doings,"  301 
"Scarlet  Letter,  The,"  174 
"Scenes  of  Clerical  Life, "  332 
"  Scholemaster,  The, "  18 
"School  for  Widows,  "153 
Schopenhauer,  80 
"Scottish  Chiefs,"  221,  228 
Scott,  Michael,  57,   III,  118,  346, 

348-351 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  8,  21,  22,97,  IIO> 
119,  125,  138,  153,  154,  169,  170, 
172,  183,  184,  195,  201,  202,  204, 

208,  217,  221,  228,  229,  231,  234, 

241,  243,  246-265,  272,  277,  281, 

282,  297,  298,  301,  302,  320,  337, 

339,    342,    344,    345,    356,    357, 

358-360,361 
Scudery,  Madeleine  de,  52,  122 
"  Seats  of  the  Mighty, "  93,  264 
"Self-Control,"  95,  169,  206,  237 
Senior,  Henry,  323 
"Sense  and  Sensibility,"   238-239, 

240 
"Sentimental  Journey, "  127,  131 
Shakespeare,  William,  8,  24,  33,  34, 

35,89 
Shaw,  G.  Bernard,  80,  83 
Shebbeare,64 
Shelley,  Harriet,  284 
Shelley,  Mrs.  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 

138, 198, 231, 233,  267, 282-285 
Shelley,  Percy  B.,   100,   130,   201, 

267,  268,  271, 283-284 
Sheridan,  Mrs.  Frances,  136 
"She  Stoops  to  Conquer,"  139 
"Shirley,  "323 
Shorthouse,  J.  H.,  333~334 
"Sicilian  Tale,  A,"  113,  1 81-183 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  11,  18,  23,  35- 

41,  52,  53,  122 


Index 


377 


"Silas  Marner, "  296 

"  Silver  Skull,  The, "  202 

"Simple  Story,  A,"  89,   155,   192- 

193.195 
Sinclair,  May,  356 
"  Sir  Andrew  Wylie, "  297 
"Sir  Charles  Grandison,"   66,   89, 

95-99,216,289,330 
"  Sir  Edward  Seaward's  Narrative, " 

222 

"Sir  George  Tressady, "  329 

"  Sir  Gibbie, "  300 

"  Sir  John  Chiverton,  "311 

"  Sketch  Book,  The, "  186 

"  Sketches  by  Boz, "  291 

"  Sketches  of  Irish  Character, "  290, 

346,347-348 
Smith,  Albert,  357 
Smith,  Horace,  262,  311 
Smith,    Mrs.    Charlotte,    64,     113, 

149,  166,  169,  175-180,  189,  211, 

261,289,290,  320 
Smith,  Sydney,  285,  331 
Smollett,  Tobias,  46,  57,   72,   80, 

81,87,91, 109-118,  119,  126, 132, 

138,  139,  152,  156,  166,  254,  261, 

27i,297»339,348»35i 
"Sophia,"  123 
Southey,    Robert,    119,    267,    268, 

272 
"Spectator,  The,"  86-88 
"Spectre  Bridegroom,  The,"  186 
"  Spiritual  Quixote,  The,"  116,  150- 

153, 181,332 
"Steamboat,  The,"  297 
Steele,  Richard,  86-88,  130,  290 
Sterne,  Laurence,  126, 127-132, 139, 

140, 148,  161,  340, 342, 344 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  41,   42, 

80,  93,  in,  202,  259,  264,  301, 

349,351,358,359-360 
"Stories  of  Waterloo,"  356 
"Story  of  Unnion  and  Valentine, 

The,"  88  _ 
Stowe, Harriet  Beecher,  65,  211,  221 
"Stranger,  The, "  206 
" Strange  Story,  A,"  342 
"  Subaltern, The, "  227, 31 1 
Sue,  Eugene,  187,  234 
"  Suil  Dhuv,  the  Coiner, "  306 
"Surgeon's  Daughter,  The,"  263 
Surtces^  Robert  Smith,  346-347 
"Suspicious  Husband,  The,"  90 
Swift,  Jonathan,  17,  18,  46,  51,  62, 

75-85,86,88,119 
"Sybil,"    200,   315-320,    321,    322, 

328 


"Talba,  The,"  302 

"Tale  of   a   Tub,   A,"  76-78,   83, 

130 
"  Tale  of  Expiation,  A, "  300 
"  Tale  of  Gamelyn, "  34 
"  Tale  of  Two  Cities, "  176,358 
"  Tales  of  Ireland, "  308 
"Talcs  of  My  Neighborhood,"  306 
"Tales  of  the  Munster  Festivals, 

The,"  208,  306 
"Talisman,  The,"  262 
"  Talis  Qualis,"  306 
"Tancred,"  288,  330 
"Tatler,  The, "  86,  87,  88,  130,  136, 

181 
Taylor,  John,  136 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  10,  37,  173,  290, 

291 
Thackeray,  William  M.,  8,  13,  23, 

43, 60, 72,  80, 81 ,  87,  90,  106, 107, 

114,  115,  131,  132,  145,  212,  221, 

254,  261,  270,  287,  302,  311,  342, 

344,358-36o,36i 
"  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw, "  220 
"Theresa  Marchmont,"  301 
"Thomas  of  Reading,"  43-46,  138, 

188,354 
Thompson,  Francis  J.,  307 
"Thoughts  on  the  Revolution,"  177 
"Three  Brothers,  The,"  334-335 
"Three  Sisters,  The, "  356 
"Tithe  Proctor,  The,"  308,  310 
"Tom  a  Lincolne, "  66,  67 
"Tom  Brown  at  Oxford,"  199 
"Tom  Brown's  School  Days,"  no, 

199 
"Tom  Burke  of  Ours, "  357 
"Tom  Cordery,"  289 
"Tom   Cringle's   Log,"    ill,    118, 

346, 348-350,  353 
"Tom  Jones,"  67,    102,    103-104, 

107,  109,  156,  237 
"Tower  Hill,"  311 
"Towerof  London,  The,"  311 
"Traits  and  Stories  of   the   Irish 

Peasantry,"  208,  308,  346 
"Treasure  Island,"   in,  259,  349, 

351 

"Trelawny  of  Trelawne, "  302-303 
"  Trials  of  Margaret  Lindsay,  The, " 

300 
"Tristram  Shandy,"  126,  127-132, 

133 

Trollope,    Anthony,    114,    325-327, 
331-332,358 


37* 


Index 


Trollope,  Mrs.  Frances,  62,  72, 
199,  211,  313-315,  3iS,  321,  330 

Twain,  Mark,  61 

"  Twenty  Thousand  Leagues  Under 
the  Sea,  "353 

"Two  Mentors,  The,"  153 

"  Two  Races  of  Men,  The, "  127 


U 


"Unclassed,"  143 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  221 

"Undine,  "257 

"Unfortunate  Traveller,  The,"  41- 

43,52 
"Upon  the  Death  of  My  Father,' 

88 
"Urania,"  40,  52 
"Utopia,"  14-18,  46 


V 


"Valentine  McClutchy,"  308,  309 

"  Valentine's  Eve, "  163 

"Valerius,  "298 

"Valperga,"283 

Vanbrugh,  163 

"Vathek,"  135,  172-174,  277 

"Venetia,"27I 

Verne,  Jules,  353 

"Vicar  of  Wakefield;   The,"    in, 

139-140, 150 
"Vicar of  Wrexhill,  The,"  330 
"Villette,"  110,231 
"  Virginians,  The, "  358 
"Vision of  Mirza,  The,"  88,  135 
"Vivian  Grey,"  301,  311-312,  338, 

.339,341    . 

Viviani,  Emilia,  284 
"Voyage  to  Laputa,  A,"  46,  51,  119 
"Voyage  to  Lilliput,"  84 
Voynich,  Mrs.,  333 

W 

Wallace,  General  Lew,  345-346 
Walpole,  Horace,  138, 141,  153, 181 
"Wanderer,  The,"  157,  162-166 
"Wandering  Jew,  The,"  234 
"Wanderings  of  Warwick, "  175 
"Warden,  The,  "325,  331 
Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  98,  192,  220, 

272,  312,  313,  322,  329-330,  335- 

336,337 


Watson,  Dr.  John,  235,  300 
"Waverley,"    208,    237,    246-248, 

263, 264 
"Way of  All  Flesh,  The,"  82-83 
Wells,  H.  G.,  17,  18,  51,  81,  83-85, 

212 
"Westward  Ho! "  259,  351-352,  35^ 
Wharton,  Mrs.  Edith,  15 
"When  Ghost  Meets  Ghost,"  361- 

362 
"When  Valmond  Came  to  Pontiac, " 

264 
"White  Doe  of  Rylstone,"  184 
"  Whitef  riars, "  357 
White,  Gilbert,  290 
Whyte-Melville,  George,  358 
"Wieland, "  138,  201 
Wilberforce,3i3 
Wilde,  Oscar,  312 
"Wild  Irish  Boy,  The,"  228 
"Wild  Irish  Girl,  The,"  164,  188, 

208,222-224 
"Wilhelm  Meister, "  260 
Wilkins,  Bishop  John,  18 
"Willy  Reilly, "  208,  308,  310 
Wilson,    John,    ("Christopher 

North"),  234,300 
"Windsor  Castle,"  311 
"Winter's  Tale,  The,"  35 
Wither,  George,  1 26 
Wollstonecraft,  Mary,  198,  220,  282 
"Women, "  230,  231,  332 
"  Woodlanders,  The, "  334 
"Woodstock,"  262-263 
Wordsworth,  William,  184, 195,  218, 

267,  272,  290 
Wroth,  Lady  Mary,  40,  52 
"Wuthering    Heights,"    138,     163, 
188,  192,  208,  232,  233,  294-295 


y 


"Yeast,"  321-322 
Yonge,  Charlotte,  331 


"Zanoni,"  138,  342 

"Zelauto,"  23 

"Zeluco,"  66,  174-175,  202,  339 

"Zicci,"342 

"Zohrab   the   Hostage,"   288,   346, 

347 


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